When he saw that against such damning facts he could make no defence, he gave himself up to his fate. Bess, thank God, was with her father. The old man had saved money, and would provide for her. She, at least, need not share his shame. His marriage with her was a secret, and there was no one to prove she was the girl who had been known as Mrs. Smith at the little house at Dalston. All he could do in support of his plea of ‘Not guilty’ would be to tell an explanatory story, which he knew his Bess, when she read it, would believe, whatever her father and the world did. He put the whole plot against him down to Smith and Co. He believed in his own heart that he had been made a scapegoat purposely by them; that they had known who he was all along, and had had a hand in the burglary. It was a clever plot, and it had succeeded. He was ruined for life, but he had not anything on his conscience. He was deeply grieved at his father’s condition, and felt partly responsible for it, but of the hideous guilt attributed to him in that respect he knew he was innocent. His stoical calmness deserted him as the time grew near for the verdict. The trial had been a long one. The element of doubt in the case had at one time been strong, but the police evidence had turned everything against him. He was found guilty by twelve intelligent fellow-countrymen, and a long sentence of penal servitude was pronounced against him by the judge, who went out of his way to point a moral on the evils of young men being extravagant, getting into debt, and keeping bad company. When George heard the sentence and was removed, it seemed as though a high wall were suddenly built up about his life. The sense of injustice faded before the sudden feeling of intense loneliness which fell upon him like a chill. He hardly realized all it meant at first. He had only that strange sense of desolation which comes upon anyone left alone in a strange place as his friends and companions vanish from his view. When the warder touched him on the arm to lead him below, and the eyes of the thronged court were fixed upon his face, he made a sudden effort to rouse himself from the lethargy into which he seemed to have fallen. He stepped to the front of the dock, and exclaimed in a loud, clear voice: ‘As God is my witness, I am an innocent man!’ The famous trial was over, and the verdict was published in special editions. The public quite agreed with the judge’s moral.