The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney Part 15

The month for which Burton had borrowed the two hundred and fifty pounds pa.s.sed rapidly--as months always do to borrowers--and expedient after expedient for raising the money was tried in vain. This money must be repaid, Kirkshaw had emphatically told him, on the day stipulated. Burton applied to the bank at Leeds, with which he usually did business, to discount an acceptance, guaranteed by one or two persons whose names he mentioned. The answer was the usual civil refusal to accept the proffered security for repayment--"the bank was just then full of discounts."

Burton ventured, as a last resource, to call on Hornby with a request that, as the rapid advance in the market-value of land consequent on the high war-prices obtained for its produce, had greatly increased the worth of Grange Farm, he would add the required sum to the already-existing mortgage. He was met by a prompt refusal. Mr. Hornby intended to foreclose as speedily as possible the mortgages he already held, and invest his capital in more profitable securities. "Well, then--would he lend the amount at any interest he chose?"

"The usury laws," replied Hornby, with his usual saturnine sneer, "would prevent my acceptance of your obliging offer, even if I had the present means, which I have not. My spare cash happens just now to be temporarily locked up."

Burton, half-crazed with anxiety, went the following day to the Leeds bank with the proffer of a fresh name agreed to be lent him by its owner. Useless! "They did not know the party." The applicant mused a few moments, and then said, "Would you discount the note of Mr. James Hornby of Pool?"

"Certainly; with a great deal of pleasure." Burton hurried away; had his horse instantly saddled, and gallopped off to Pool. Hornby was at home.

"You hinted the other day," said Burton, "that if you had not been short of present means you might have obliged me with the loan I required"

"Did I?"

"At least I so understood you. I am of course not ignorant, Mr. Hornby, that there is no good blood between us two; but I also know that you are fond of money, and that you are fully aware that I am quite safe for a few hundred pounds. I am come, therefore, to offer you ten pounds _bonus_ for your acceptance at one month for two hundred and fifty pounds."

"What?" exclaimed Hornby with strange vehemence. "What"

Burton repeated his offer, and Hornby turned away towards the window without speaking.

When he again faced Burton, his countenance wore its usual color; but the expression of his eyes, the applicant afterwards remembered, was wild and exulting.

"Have you a bill stamp?"

"Yes."

"Then draw the bill at once, and I will accept it."

Burton did not require to be twice told. The bill was quickly drawn; Hornby took it to another table at the further end of the apartment, slowly wrote his name across it, folded, and returned it to Burton, who tendered the ten pounds he had offered, and a written acknowledgment that the bill had been drawn and accepted for his (Burton's) accommodation.

"I don't want your money, Henry Burton," said Hornby, putting back the note and the memorandum. "I am not afraid of losing by this transaction.

You do not know me yet."

"A queer stick," thought Burton, as he gained the street; "but Old Nick is seldom so black as he's painted! He was a plaguy while, I thought, signing his name; but I wish I could sign mine to such good purpose."

Burton laid the accepted bill, face downwards, on the bank counter, took a pen, indorsed, and pa.s.sed it to the managing clerk. The gray-headed man glanced sharply at the signature, and then at Burton, "Why, surely this is not Mr. Hornby's signature? It does not at all resemble it!"

"Not his signature!" exclaimed Burton; "what do you mean by that?"

"Reynolds, look here," continued the clerk, addressing another of the bank _employes_. Reynolds looked, and his immediate glance of surprise and horror at Burton revealed the impression he had formed.

"Please to step this way, Mr. Burton, to a private apartment," said the manager.

"No--no, I won't," stammered the unfortunate man, over whose mind a dreadful suspicion had glanced with the suddenness of lightning. "I will go back to Hornby;" and he made a desperate but vain effort to s.n.a.t.c.h the fatal instrument. Then, pale and staggering with a confused terror and bewilderment, he attempted to rush into the street. He was stopped, with the help of the bystanders, by one of the clerks, who had jumped over the counter for the purpose.

The messenger despatched by the bankers to Hornby returned with an answer that the alleged acceptance was a forgery. It was stated on the part of Mr. Hornby that Mr. Burton had indeed requested him to lend two hundred and fifty pounds, but he had refused. The frantic a.s.severations of poor Burton were of course disregarded, and he was conveyed to jail. An examination took place the next day before the magistrates, and the result was, that the prisoner was fully committed on the then capital charge for trial at the ensuing a.s.size.

It were useless, as painful, to dwell upon the consternation and agony which fell upon the dwellers at Grange Farm when the terrible news reached them. A confident belief in the perfect innocence of the prisoner, partic.i.p.ated by most persons who knew his character and that of Hornby, and that it would be triumphantly vindicated on the day of trial, which rapidly approached, alone enabled them to bear up against the blow, and to await with trembling hope the verdict of a jury.

It was at this crisis of the drama that I became an actor in it. I was retained for the defence by my long-known and esteemed friend Symonds, whose zeal for his client, stimulated by strong personal friends.h.i.+p, knew no bounds. The acceptance, he informed me, so little resembled Hornby's handwriting, that if Burton had unfolded the bill when given back to him by the villain, he could hardly have failed to suspect the nature of the diabolical snare set for his life.

In those days, and until Mr., now Sir, Robert Peel's amendment of the criminal law and practice of this country, the acceptor of a bill of exchange, on the principle that he was _interested_ in denying the genuineness of the signature, could not, according to the English law of evidence, be called, on the part of the prosecution, to prove the forgery; and of course, after what had taken place, we did not propose to call Hornby for the defence. The evidence for the crown consisted, therefore, on the day of trial, of the testimony of persons acquainted with Hornby's signature, that the acceptance across the inculpated bill was not in his handwriting. Burton's behavior at the bank, in endeavoring to repossess himself of the bill by violence, was of course detailed, and told heavily against him.

All the time this testimony was being given, Hornby sat on one of the front seats of the crowded court, exulting in the visible accomplishment of his Satanic device. We could see but little of his face, which, supported on his elbow, was partially concealed by a handkerchief he held in his hand; but I, who narrowly observed him, could occasionally discern flashes from under his pent brows--revealments of the fierce struggle which raged within.

The moment at last arrived for the prisoner, whose eyes had been for some time fixed on Hornby, to speak or read his defence, and a breathless silence pervaded the court.

Burton started at the summons, like a man unexpectedly recalled to a sense of an imperious, but for the moment forgotten, duty.

"James Hornby!" he suddenly cried with a voice which rang through the a.s.sembly like a trumpet, "stand up, and if you can face an innocent man"--

Hornby, surprised out of his self-possession, mechanically obeyed the strange order, sprang involuntarily to his feet, let fall the handkerchief that had partially concealed his features, and nervously confronted the prisoner.

"Look at me, I say," continued Burton with increasing excitement; "and as you hope to escape the terrors of the last judgment, answer truly: did you not, with your own hand, and in my presence, sign that bill?"--

"This cannot be permitted," interrupted the judge.

"If you do not speak," proceeded the prisoner, heedless of the intimation from the bench; "or if you deny the truth, my life, as sure as there is a G.o.d in heaven, will be required at your hands. If, in consequence of your devilish plotting, these men consign me to a felon's grave, I shall not be cold in it when you will be calling upon the mountains to fall and cover you from the vengeance of the Judge of heaven and earth! Speak, man--save me: save your own soul from mortal peril whilst there is yet time for mercy and repentance!"

Hornby's expression of surprise and confusion had gradually changed during this appeal to its usual character of dogged impa.s.sibility. He turned calmly and appealingly towards the bench.

"You need not answer these wild adjurations, Mr. Hornby," said the judge, as soon as he could make himself heard.

A smile curled the fellow's lip as he bowed deferentially to his lords.h.i.+p, and he sat down without uttering a syllable.

"May the Lord, then, have mercy on my soul!" exclaimed the prisoner solemnly. Then glancing at the bench and jury-box, he added, "And you, my lord and gentlemen, work your will with my body as quickly as you may: I am a lost man!"

The calling of witnesses to character, the opening of the judge's charge, pointing from its first sentence to a conviction, elicited no further manifestation of feeling from the prisoner: he was as calm as despair.

The judge had been speaking for perhaps ten minutes, when a bustle was heard at the hall, as if persons were striving to force their way into the body of the court in spite of the resistance of the officers.

"Who is that disturbing the court?" demanded the judge angrily.

"For the love of Heaven let me pa.s.s!" we heard uttered in pa.s.sionate tones by a female voice. "I must and will see the judge!"

"Who can this be?" T inquired, addressing Mr. Symonds.

"I cannot conceive," he replied; "surely not Mrs. Burton?"

I had kept my eye, as I spoke, upon Hornby, and noticed that he exhibited extraordinary emotion at the sound of the voice, to whomsoever it belonged, and was now endeavoring to force his way through the crowded and anxious auditory.

"My lord," said I, "I have to request on the part of the prisoner that the person desirous of admittance may be heard."

"What has she to say? Or if a material witness, why have you not called her at the proper time?" replied his lords.h.i.+p with some irritation.

"My lord, I do not even now know her name; but in a case involving the life of the prisoner, it is imperative that no chance be neglected"--

"Let the woman pa.s.s into the witness-box," interrupted the judge.

The order brought before our eyes a pale, stunted woman, of about fifty years of age, whose excited and by no means unintellectual features, and hurried, earnest manner, seemed to betoken great and unusual feeling.