An examination into the affair took place that day at Bow Street; but it was proved that Henry had, unknown to Mr. Hayley, frequented the counting-house of Mr. Scriven for more than a fortnight; that he was anxious to conceal his doing so from his father; that, on the very morning of his departure for Northumberland, he had written to Mr. Scriven to say he should come no more; that at four o'clock that day he had obtained money upon the forged bill, and then gone, no one rightly knew whither, further than that his journey was towards Northumberland; for Mr. Hayley took care to give no explanations on that head. A thousand little circumstances of no real value, such as some small bills at Eton left unpaid, tended to make up a mass of evidence against him; and thus the guilty escaped--if not without doubts, yet without any charge against him--while the whole weight of suspicion fell upon the innocent boy, who was sailing away over the sea to Rotterdam. CHAPTER V. The curious state of society in which we exist, and the complex causes and effects which it comprises--the fictitious, the factitious, the unreal, the unnatural relations which it establishes between man and man--are always producing unexpected results and events which no one can rightly account for, because no one can trace all the fine lines which connect one piece of the complicated machinery with another. It must have often struck every thinker who gathers up the passing events, and marks the impression which they produce upon the world at large, that matters, often of great moment, will excite little or no attention--will be slurred over in newspapers, pass without comment in society, be hardly heard of beyond the narrowest possible circle round the point at which they take place--while mere trifles will set Rumour's thousand tongues a-going, men and women will interest themselves with eager anxiety about things that do not affect them in the least, and half the world will be on fire as to whether a feather was blown to the right or the left. The basest political scheme that ever was practised for depriving a queen of hope, happiness, and power, and a great country of its independence, will excite far less attention and curiosity than the disappointment of one priest's ambition and the compensation of another priest's unmerited persecution.