"as I expected, he can give me but little satisfaction on some points respecting the occurrence on the 18th of last month, which I desire to have cleared up. Perhaps you two can tell me what I want to know. As intimate friends of Barton's you probably know, or can conjecture a good deal. Have no scruple as to speaking the truth. What you say in this room shall never be named again by me. Besides, you are aware that the law allows no one to be tried twice for the same offence." He stopped for a minute, for the mere act of speaking was fatiguing to him after the excitement of the last few weeks. Job Legh took the opportunity of speaking. "I'm not going to be affronted either for myself or Jem at what you've just now been saying about the truth. You don't know us, and there's an end on't, only it's as well for folk to think others good and true until they're proved contrary. Ask what you like, sir, I'll answer for it we'll either tell truth, or hold our tongues." "I beg your pardon," said Mr Carson, slightly bowing his head. "What I wished to know was" referring to a slip of paper he held in his hand, and shaking so much he could hardly adjust his glasses to his eyes, "whether you, Wilson, can explain how Barton came possessed of your gun. I believe you refused this explanation to Mr Bridgenorth." "I did, sir! If I had said what I knew then, I saw it would criminate Barton, and so I refused telling aught. To you, sir, now I will tell everything and anything; only it is but little. The gun was my father's before it was mine, and long ago he and John Barton had a fancy for shooting at the gallery; and they used always to take this gun, and brag that though it was old-fashioned it was sure. Jem saw with self-upbraiding pain how Mr Carson winced at these last words, but at each irrepressible and involuntary evidence of feeling, the hearts of the two men warmed towards him. Jem went on speaking. "One day in the week--I think it was on the Wednesday,--yes, it was--it was on St Patrick's day, I met John just coming out of our house, as I were going to my dinner. Mother was out, and he'd found no one in. He said he'd come to borrow the old gun, and that he'd have made bold, and taken it, but it was not to be seen. Mother was afraid of it, so after father's death (for while he were alive, she seemed to think he could manage it)
I had carried it to my own room. I went up and fetched it for John, who stood outside the door all the time." "What did he say he wanted it for?" asked Mr Carson, hastily. "I don't think he spoke when I gave it him. At first he muttered something about the shooting gallery, and I never doubted but that it was for practice there, as I knew he had done years before." Mr Carson had strung up his frame to an attitude of upright attention while Jem was speaking; now the tension relaxed, and he sank back in his chair, weak and powerless. He rose up again, however, as Jem went on, anxious to give every particular which could satisfy the bereaved father. "I never knew for what he wanted the gun till I was taken up,--I do not know yet why he wanted it. No one would have had me get out of the scrape by implicating an old friend,--my father's old friend, and the father of the girl I loved. So I refused to tell Mr Bridgenorth aught about it, and would not have named it now to any one but you." Jem's face became very red at the allusion he made to Mary, but his honest, fearless eyes had met Mr Carson's penetrating gaze unflinchingly, and had carried conviction of his innocence and truthfulness; Mr Carson felt certain that he had heard all that Jem could tell. Accordingly he turned to Job Legh. "You were in the room the whole time while Barton was speaking to me, I think?" "Yes, sir," answered Job. "You'll excuse my asking plain and direct questions; the information I am gaining is really a relief to my mind, I don't know how, but it is,--will you tell me if you had any idea of Barton's guilt in this matter before?" "None whatever, so help me God!" said Job, solemnly. "To tell truth (and axing your forgiveness, Jem), I had never got quite shut of the notion that Jem here had done it. At times I was as clear of his innocence as I was of my own; and whenever I took to reasoning about it, I saw he could not have been the man that did it. Still I never thought of Barton." "And yet by his confession he must have been absent at the time," said Mr Carson, referring to his slip of paper. "Aye, and for many a day after,--I can't rightly say how long. But still, you see, one's often blind to many a thing that lies right under one's nose, till it's pointed out. And till I beard what John Barton had to say yon night, I could not have seen what reason he had for doing it; while in the case of Jem, any one who looked at Mary Barton might have seen a cause for jealousy clear enough." "Then you believe that Barton had no knowledge of my son's unfortunate--," he looked at Jem "of his attentions to Mary Barton. This young man, Wilson, has heard of them, you see." "The person who told me said clearly she neither had, nor would tell Mary's father," interposed Jem. "I don't believe he'd ever heard of it; he weren't a man to keep still in such a matter, if he had." "Besides," said Job, "the reason he gave on his death-bed, so to speak, was enough; 'specially to those who knew him." "You mean his feelings regarding the treatment of the workmen by the masters; you think he acted from motives of revenge, in consequence of the part my son had taken in putting down the strike?" "Well, sir," replied Job, "it's hard to say: John Barton was not a man to take counsel with people; nor did he make many words about his doings.
So I can only judge from his way of thinking and talking in general, never having heard him breathe a syllable concerning this matter in particular.