“‘Yet,’ said the Judge, ‘one would like to find him out by means of the Law.’
“‘Well,’ said Mr. Campaigne, ‘for my own part, I resolved that I would do all in my power so that an innocent man should not suffer for the guilty if I could prevent it.’
“‘Sir,’ said the Judge, ‘your conduct is what the world expects of a noble gentleman. There remains one conclusion. It is that there was someone concealed in the wood. The boy said that no one went out. He was thinking of the two ends; but he could not perhaps see through the wood, or beyond the wood. It is not yet, perhaps, too late to search for footsteps. However, no doubt all that can be done will be done.’
“So the trial was finished. I have not heard that any further examination of the spot was made. As all the village, and people from neighbouring villages and the nearest market-towns, crowded over every Sunday for weeks after, gazing at the spot where the body was found, it was of very little use to look for footsteps.
“The man John Dunning went back to work. But the village folk--his old friends--turned against him. They would no longer associate with him; the taint of murder was upon him, though he was as innocent a man as ever stepped. The Vicar spoke to the people, but it was in vain; anyone who had been tried for murder must be a murderer, and he was shunned like a leper or a madman.
“Then the Vicar spoke about it to the Squire, who gave John money so that he might emigrate; and with all his family he went to Botany Bay, where the people are not all convicts, I am told. There, at least, it ought not to be thrown in a man’s teeth that he had been tried and acquitted for murder. I have never heard what became of John Dunning and his family afterwards.
“The Squire offered a reward of £500 for the apprehension and conviction of some person unknown who had murdered Mr. Langley Holme. The printed bill remained on the church door for years--long after the rain had washed out the letters, until the whole bill was finally washed out and destroyed. But the reward was never claimed, nor was there any attempt to fix the guilt upon another; and as time went on, a belief grew up in the minds of the world that, notwithstanding the acquittal, no other was possible as the criminal than John Dunning himself. So that it was a fortunate thing for him that he went away when he did, before the popular belief was turned quite so dead against him.