"
"All right, my tulip," said Mr. Green cheerfully, and drew his companions
quietly away. But the next moment he began to run, and making a sudden
turn, dived into a street then into a passage, and so winded and doubled
till he got to a small public-house: he used some flash word, and they
were shown a private room. "Wait here an hour for me," he whispered; "I
must see who liberates him, and whether he is really as innocent as he
reads, or we have been countermined by the devil's own tutor."
The unexpected turn the evidence had taken--evidence of their own
choosing, too--cleared Mr. Hardie with the unprofessionals. Edward
embraced this conclusion as a matter of course, and urged the character
of that gentleman's solitary traducer: Alfred was a traitor, and
therefore why not a slanderer?
Even Sampson, on the whole, inclined to a similar conclusion.
At this crisis of the discussion a red-haired pedlar, with very large
whiskers and the remains of a black eye, put his head in, and asked
whether Tom Green was there. "No," said the Doctor stoutly, not desiring
company of this stamp.
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