'
'I suppose the general feeling was in his favour?' I said.
'I don't think it was, anywhere; but in his own county it was certainly
unanimously against him. There is no use in asking why; but so it was, and
I think it would have been easier for him with his unaided strength to
uproot the Peak than to change the convictions of the Derbyshire gentlemen.
They were all against him. Of course there were predisposing causes. Your
uncle published a very bitter attack upon them, describing himself as the
victim of a political conspiracy: and I recollect he mentioned that from
the hour of the shocking catastrophe in his house, he had forsworn the turf
and all pursuits and amusements connected with it. People sneered, and said
he might as well go as wait to be kicked out.'
'Were there law-suits about all this?' I asked.
'Everybody expected that there would, for there were very savage things
printed on both sides, and I think, too, that the persons who thought worst
of him expected that evidence would yet turn up to convict Silas of the
crime they chose to impute; and so years have glided away, and many of the
people who remembered the tragedy of Bartram-Haugh, and took the strongest
part in the denunciation, and ostracism that followed, are dead, and no new
light had been thrown upon the occurrence, and your uncle Silas remains an
outcast.
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