Since the fact of Northwick's survival had been established beyond question by the publication of his letter, Hilary's mind in regard to him had undergone a great revulsion. It relieved itself with a sharp rebound from the oppressive sense of responsibility for his death, which he seemed to have incurred in telling Northwick that the best thing for him would be a railroad accident. Now that the man was not killed, Hilary could freely declare, "He made a great mistake in not getting out of the world, as many of us believed he had; I confess I had rather got to believe it myself. But he ought at least to have had the grace to remain dead to the poor creatures he had dishonored till he could repay the people he had defrauded." "Ah! I don't know about that," said Sewell. "No? Why not?" "Because it would be a kind of romantic deceit that he'd better not keep up." "He seems to have kept it up for the last four or five months," said Hilary. "That's no reason he should continue to keep it up," Sewell persisted. "Perhaps he never knew of the rumor of his death." "Ah, that isn't imaginable. There isn't a hole or corner left where the newspapers don't penetrate, nowadays." "Not in Boston. But if he were in hiding in some little French village down the St. Lawrence--" "Isn't that as romantic as the other notion, parson?" crowed old Corey. "No, I don't think so," said the minister. "The cases are quite different. He might have a morbid shrinking from his own past, and the wish to hide from it as far as he could; that would be natural; but to leave his children to believe a rumor of his death in order to save their feelings, would be against nature; it would be purely histrionic; a motive from the theatre; that is, perfectly false." "Pretty hard on Hilary, who invented it," Bellingham suggested; and they all laughed. "I don't know," said Hilary. "The man seems to be posing in other ways. You would think from his letter that he was a sort of martyr to principle, and that he'd been driven off to Canada by the heartless creditors whom he's going to devote his life to saving from loss, if he can't do it in a few months or years. He may not be a conscious humbug, but he's certainly a humbug. Take that pretence of his that he would come back and stand his trial if he believed it would not result in greater harm than good by depriving him of all hope of restitution!" "Why, there's a sort of crazy morality in that," said Corey. "Perhaps," said Bellingham, "the solution of the whole matter is that Northwick is cracked." "I've no doubt he's cracked to a certain extent," said Sewell, "as every wrong-doer is. You know the Swedenborgians believe that insanity is the last state of the wicked." "I suppose," observed old Corey, thoughtfully, "you'd be very glad to have him keep out of your reach, Hilary?" "What a question!" said Hilary. "You're _as_ bad as my daughter. She asked me the same thing." "I wish I were no worse," said the old man.