"Why did he strike you?" asked the magistrate.
"Aye, that's what I wants to know, your worship!" replied Mr. Bob.
"Then suppose you ask him now," rejoined his worship; "ask him, why he gave you the two smacks, as you call them."
Mr. Bob, turned, and looked Mr. Dan in the face, as though about to put the question to him; but Mr. Dan smiled him out of countenance, and Mr. Bob, turning back to his worship, said--"It's no use axing him anything, your worship, for he's got a spite agen me ever since I was in prison for saying a few words to a servant _gal_ what brought me here on a peace warrant, by which means he never sees me but he peeps through his fingers at me, as much as to say, 'who peep'd through the prison bars?'--He's a great blackguard, though he's a little chap, your worship; and he never meets my wife, Mrs. Wingrove, but he cries--'Here's a charming young broom!' when my wife is _not a charming young broom_--as all her neighbours can testify, but as honest a woman as ever broke bread--only that, like all other women, your worship, she likes a drop of something comfortable now and then."
Mr. Bob's landlady corroborated all his evidence general and particular, and her evidence closed the case for the prosecution.
Mr. Dan Butcher, in his defence, admitted that he _took_ Mr. Bob Wingrove _two smacks in the head_, as that gentleman had deposed, but he assured his worship they were in return for a _punch in the stomach_ which Mr. Bob Wingrove had _lent_ him; and he called two witnesses to prove that Mr. Bob was the aggressor.
Both these witnesses declared that Dan Butcher was walking quietly under Mr. Bob's window, singing a song, and "giving no offence to nobody," when Mr. Bob ran down stairs, and struck him in the bowels "without any _privy-cation_ whatsoever."
"And pray what song was he singing?" asked his worship; "I have no doubt it was a song intended to insult him."
"Your worship, I don't know what song it was," replied the first witness--"it was a funny sort of song enough, and there was a _tithery um_ at the end of it."
The second witness, however, after much pressing, admitted that it was a song called "_Bob's in the watch-house_," and made by one of the Hungerford-stairs poets in commemoration of poor Mr. Bob's imprisonment.