Besides, the Home Secretary's nephew was
M.P. for the Knype division. Of course a verdict of guilty had
been inevitable. Everybody recognized that now. Even Samuel and
all the hottest partisans of Daniel Povey recognized it. They
talked as if they had always foreseen it, directly contradicting
all that they had said on only the previous day. Without any sense
of any inconsistency or of shame, they took up an absolutely new
position. The structure of blind faith had once again crumbled at
the assault of realities, and unhealthy, un-English truths, the
statement of which would have meant ostracism twenty-four hours
earlier, became suddenly the platitudes of the Square and the
market-place.
Despatch was necessary in the affair of the petition, for the
condemned man had but three Sundays. But there was delay at the
beginning, because neither young Lawton nor any of his colleagues
was acquainted with the proper formula of a petition to the Home
Secretary for the reprieve of a criminal condemned to death. No
such petition had been made in the district within living memory.
And at first, young Lawton could not get sight or copy of any such
petition anywhere, in the Five Towns or out of them.
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