The law of libel, as it affects newspaper proprietors, is peculiar with regard to the publication of public sayings and doings. The reporter may set down the most scurrilous and libellous speech which counsel or solicitor may make in a court of justice, and the newspaper editor may publish it in his columns without a shadow of legal responsibility resting upon him; but anything said at a public meeting which in any way affects the character or reputation of a private individual or a public man, is published at the editor’s peril: so that several of the London journals refrained from chronicling all that took place at the Eastern Bank meeting. One editor, bolder than the rest, published the meeting at length; and his paper it was which enlightened the people in the Avonworth Valley with regard to the unusual manner and conduct of the famous proprietor of Barton Hall. CHAPTER XIX. OF CERTAIN REPORTS IN THE NEWSPAPERS. O, those hard and bitter histories, the newspapers! Hard as the metal in which they are printed. Stern matter-of-fact histories of the great world. They go straight to the subject; they do not prepare the reader by any quiet preliminary caution that the man who has been found murdered is his father; there is nothing roundabout in that long list of deaths. You have no time to think before the awful truth is in your mind. That railway accident,--is your dear friend unhurt?--whilst you are wondering, there stands his name in the list of dead. That little indiscretion of your son’s;--here it is, blazoned forth to the world in the police reports: he was only anxious to save his friend, and his zeal overcame his discretion; he is fined for obstructing a policeman in the execution of his duty, and here stands the record, to be turned against him any day. O, hard and bitter histories! They told the story on that second day. They told the two stories. They came to Barton Hall, wrapped up carefully and smug as of yore. They were carried to the kitchen fire and dried. John scanned them, and saw nothing of importance. Mary noticed a frightful murder stuck down in one corner, almost out of sight. Peter the groom took note of the latest betting; but none of them saw what the people at the town found out later in the day; and none of them saw what Phœbe Tallant and Amy Somerton saw. Mr. Tallant had been engaged until late with his country lawyer, and had kept his room on that second day. Phœbe was sure there was something seriously the matter with her father; for he had pressed her hand, and kissed her, and made the tears come into her eyes.