Baker raised
objections; Mr. Hardie crushed them with his purse, _i.e.,_ with his
son's and victim's sweetheart's father's money. So then, as Baker after
all could not resist the project, but only postpone it for a day or two,
he preferred to take a handsome present, and cooperate. He even connived
at Mr. Hardie's signing the requisite name to the new order. This the
giddy world calls forgery; but, in these calm retreats, far from the
public's inquisitive eye, it goes for nothing. Why, Mrs. Archbold had
signed Baker's name and Dr. Bailey's more than a hundred several times to
orders, statements, and certificates; depriving Englishmen of their
liberty and their property with a gesture of her taper fingers; and
venting the conventional terms, "Aberration," "Exaltation," "Depression,"
"Debility," "Paralysis," "Excitable," "Abnormal," as boldly and blindly
as any male starling in the flock.
On the very night, then, of Alfred's projected escape, two keepers came
down from Dr. Wycherley's asylum to Silverton station: Baker met them and
drove them to Silverton House in his dog-cart.
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