Five minutes later the door closed on his guests, and Sir John found himself once more alone. "Well, this is a kettle of fish," he said to himself angrily, as he paced up and down the room; "a most infernal kettle of fish, I call it. I shouldn't be surprised if before a week is out that young scoundrel will be heralded by a brass band playing 'See the Conquering Hero comes.' And, of course, every ounce of sympathy will go out to him. He'll be a kind of martyr, and I shall be execrated as a kind of Legree and Judge Jeffreys rolled into one. And then, of course, Dorothy will catch the popular contagion, and will interview him if she has the chance; and he'll make love to her--the villain! And here's Lord Probus bullying me, and every confounded money-lending Jew in the neighbourhood dunning me for money, and Geoffrey taking to extravagant ways with more alacrity than I did before him. I wonder if any other man in the county is humbugged as I am?" Sir John spent the rest of the waking hours of that night in scheming how best he could get and keep Dorothy out of the way of Ralph Penlogan. CHAPTER XIX A SILENT WELCOME If a man is unfortunate enough to find himself in the clutches of what is euphemistically called "the law," the sooner and the more completely he can school himself to patience the better for his peace of mind. Lawyers and legislators do not appear generally to be of a mechanical turn, and the huge machine which they have constructed for the purpose of discovering and punishing criminals is apparently without any reversing gear. The machine will go forward ponderously and cumbrously, but it will not go backward without an infinite amount of toil and trouble. Hence, if a man is once caught in its toils, even though he is innocent, he will, generally speaking, have to go through the mill and come out at the far end. For such a small and remote contingency as a miscarriage of justice there is apparently no provision. If the wronged and deluded man will only have patience, he will come out of the mill in due course; and if he is but civil, he will be rewarded with a free pardon and told not to do it again. The generosity of the State in compensating those who have been wrongfully convicted and punished has grown into a proverb. In some instances they have been actually released before their time has expired--which, of course, has meant a considerable amount of work for those who had control of the mill; and work to the highly paid officials of the State is little less to be dreaded than the plague.