Some people apparently believed confidently that the two culprits had lost the money in secret speculation and in gambling: other people were just as certain that they had quietly put the money away in some safe quarter.

The prisoners themselves absolutely refused to give the least scrap of information: ever since their arrest they had maintained a stolid silence and a defiant demeanour.

More than once during the progress of the trial they had opportunities of making clean breasts of their misdoings and refused to take them.

Found guilty, they were put back until next day for sentence--that, of course, was to give them another chance of saying what they had done with the money.

But they had kept up their silence to the end, and they had been sentenced to two years' imprisonment, with hard labour, and so had disappeared from public view, with their secret--if there really was a secret--intact.
So much for the newspaper cutting from the _Wilchester Sentinel_.