Let moralists and philosophers say what they may, it is very questionable¹ whether a guilty man would have felt half as much misery³ that night, as Kit⁴ did, being innocent. The world, being in the constant commission of vast quantities of injustice⁵, is a little too apt to comfort itself with the idea that if the victim of its falsehood and malice⁶ have a clear conscience, he cannot fail to be sustained under his trials, and somehow or other to come right at last; ‘in which case,’ say they who have hunted him down, ‘— though we certainly don’t expect it — nobody will be better pleased than we.’ Whereas, the world would do well to reflect, that injustice is in itself, to every generous and properly constituted mind, an injury, of all others the most insufferable, the most torturing, and the most hard to bear; and that many clear consciences have gone to their account elsewhere, and many sound hearts have broken, because of this very reason; the knowledge of their own deserts only aggravating⁷ their sufferings, and rendering⁸ them the less endurable.

The world, however, was not in fault in Kit’s case. But Kit was innocent; and knowing this, and feeling that his best friends deemed him guilty — that Mr and Mrs Garland would look upon him as a monster of ingratitude⁹ — that Barbara would associate him with all that was bad and criminal — that the pony¹⁰ would consider himself forsaken¹¹ — and that even his own mother might perhaps yield to the strong appearances against him, and believe him to be the

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