Chapter VII. In Gaol.

The news soon spread that the murderer of Captain Lewis was in the hands of the police. It produced a profound sensation. With the party of ‘law and order’ there was a sense of satisfaction that a crime so daring had been promptly followed up, and that the arm of justice had reached the criminal. Few seemed to doubt the guilt of the acccused. The evidence was circumstantial, but it was so conclusive at the coroner's inquest. But the satisfaction was tempered with astonishment that a man so respected, one who was thought in no way connected with the turbulent classes, could have involved himself in such a desperate business.

With the masses of the peasantry the feeling was of a very different kind. Dillon was to them a hero, the avenger of their safferings. He had taken on him to free the country from a tyrant that had been the terror of their lives, and if there had been any way in which he might have been rescued, there were daring spirits and ready hands for the attempt.

But that was out of the question. Owing to the unsettled state of the district, the authorities had massed a force of police in the place, and any idea of open resiatance to the course of the law was idle.

But Dillon had not been in gaol more than two or three days when overtures were made to him respecting his defence. They came to him through an attorney who was known to have the confidence of the lawless classes of the district, and who had, on many an occasion before, been engaged in the defence of offenders of this class who had brought themselves under the grasp of the law. Dillon was assured that funds in abundance were at his disposal, and he was offered the assistance of one of the ablest counsel on the circuit.

The day of the trial was rapidly approaching, and he fully recognised the necessity for the best legal assistunce he could have. However confident he was that an innocent man could not be found guilty, he realised the peril of his position, and the difficulty surrounding him in proving his case. For the time he could not see how he could afford to obtain the requisite assistance, but he peremptorily declined the offered aid. He felt that it was only made on the assumption page 16 that he was guilty, and he knew that any recognition of sympathy from such a quarter would only confirm the belief that he had taken upon him to avenge their wrongs, and would tell against him at the trial.

His wife had frequently visited him in gaol, and often and anxiously had they considered the necessity for the best legal advice; but though Mrs Dillon had made every effort that her intense anxiety could suggest to obtain the means of feeing counsel, she had failed. Everything on the farm had been seized, and the sympathy of friends, and of the classes which alone could afford the help required, seemed, to have been frozen up for the time by indignant anger against her husband, whom they assumed to be guilty of such a revolting crime.

But there was one whose heart had not been steeled against the sufferer, and in the wife of the clergyman of the parish Mrs Dillon found a friend in need. Mrs Maurice had been a school companion of Mrs Dillon's, and years had not cooled the friendship that had existed between them. In common with everyone in the district she had been shocked at the terrible charge laid against Mr Dillon, but nothing, could persuade her of his guilt. Not so her husband. He was in constant association with the gentry of the district, and had imbilbed their sentiments, and with them there was not a shadow of doubt that Dillon was guilty. Mr Maurice had even gone so far as to make the occurence of theme for pulpit eloquence, and in violation of the principle that a man should be deemed innocent until he is found guilty, he had taken the assumed guilt of Dillon to point a moral as to the inherent depravity of the human heart; and although he guarded his words by saying that it would be presumption in him to anticipate the course of justice, or pronounce on any man's guilt till it was of proved, he descanted on the protean forms of guilt, and the impossibility of fathoming the depths of human iniquity that may lie beneath a smooth surface, for the heart was deceitful above all thing and desperately wicked, who can know it?

Nothing daunated by all this, Mrs Maurice determined to stand by her friend in her trouble, and though surrounded by those who sneered at the idea of the innocence of the accnsed, and upbraided her with her sympathy with crime, she proceeded to put her resolution in practice. By dint of perseverance, she succeeded in ruising, often from relnetant contributors, a fond more than sufficient to cover the cost of the defence, and this she handed over to Mrs Dillon.

The help came none too soon. The day of trial was at hund, and nothing had been done to collect evidence for the defence. Dillon knew that his flight to London immediately after the occurrence of the murder was the point that chiefly prejudiced his case, and that which most required elucidation; and if time only had allowed, he meant to have had evidence as to his having actually called at the residence of Lord Errington as to some extent a proof of bona fides in the explanation of the causes of his visit to London. It was too late now.

However, at the earliest possible moment, the devoted wife called on one of the ablest and most respected attorneys of the county, and placed the whole affair in his hands. He listened with patient attention to her account of everything that had transpired, from the first intimation of their losing their farm till the arrest of Dillon on his return from London. At first there was an air of hesitnnry and incredulity in the manner of the attorney as she unfolded the plausible tale, but there was such an earnestness in her manner and such a candour in the statement of every incident, even those which told most against her husband, that the attorney felt irresistibly impelled to the belief that she at least was convinced of her husband's entire disconnection with the crime.

He questioned her minutely as to the circumstances of Dillon's leaving for London, the hour of leaving, the visit to the pawnbroker's, the hour of the starting of the coach, comparing it with the time at which it was stated the murder had been committed; and as a result of all, he seemed so impressed by her statements that she ventured to ask him what he thought of the position of her husband.

He replied that if she could only prove these facts in the court as she had stated them to him, it might go well with her husband; but as by law a wife was precluded from giving evidence either for or against her husband on a charge of murder, she would be unable, unless she had independent evidence, to prove the circumstances of his unfortunate departure for London on this very night of the murder.

Mrs Dillon had not been aware of this before, and all her hopes of helping her husband seemed shattered with one blow. Was there no servant, nor child, nor any one cognizant of his preparations and intentions and the object of his going? No they had desired to conceal his visit to London, and though there were servants in the house as well as her children, who in any case would have been too young to give testimony as to their objects, no one but herself and her husband had been acquainted with the intention of the visit to London.

He said the case looked very grave, and would tax their utmost efforts, and he wished he had had longer time for getting up evidence. However, he would retain a counsel, whom he mentioned, and he would spare no pains to do his very utmost in the case.

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Several interviews which he had with the prisoner, confirmed the attorney in his belief that the accused was innocent, but in what way to prove that innocence was a problem that he felt very difficult to solve.