The witness’s attention was again distracted, but this time by no such pleasing object as on the former occasion. He was dumbfoundered; a sparrow facing an owl could hardly be in a greater state of nervousness and discomfiture: for down in the well of the Court, a place where he had never once cast his eyes till now, with a broad grin on his coarse features, and a look of malignant triumph, sat the _fiendlike Snooks_! His mouth was wide open, and Bumpkin found himself looking down into it as though it had been a saw-pit. By his side sat Locust taking notes of the cross-examination.
“What are you looking at, Mr. Bumpkin?” inquired the learned counsel.
“I wur lookin’ doun thic there hole in thic feller’s head,” answered Bumpkin.
Such a roar of laughter followed this speech as is seldom heard even in a breach of promise case, where the most touching pathos often causes the greatest amusement to the audience.
“I be sorry for the old chap,” said Joe; “they be givin’ it to un pooty stiff.”
“Now attend,” said the counsel, “and never mind the hole. Did a young woman with a baby come up?”
“Don’t say to the best of your belief; did she or not?”
“He can only speak to the best of his belief,” said the Judge.
(“There’s the round square,” whispered O’Rapley.)
“Did she come up then to the best of your belief?”
“And—did—she—accuse—you—to the best of your belief of assaulting her?”
“I be a married man,” answered the witness. (Great laughter.)
“Yes, we know all about you; we’ll see who you are presently. Did she accuse you, and did you run away?”
The learned counsel then sat down with the quickest motion imaginable, and then the policeman gave his evidence as to taking the man into custody; and produced the huge watch. Mr. Bumpkin was recalled and asked how long he had had it, and where he bought it; the only answers to which were that he had had it five years, and bought it of a man in the market; did not know who he was or where he came from; all which answers looked very black against Mr. Bumpkin. Then the policeman was asked to answer this question—yes or no. “Did he know the prisoner?” He said “No.”
Mr. Nimble said to the jury, “Here was a man dressing himself up as an old man from the country (laughter) prowling about the streets of London in company with an associate whose name he dared not mention, and who probably was well-known to the police; here was this countryman actually accused of committing an assault in the public streets on a young woman with a baby in her arms: he runs away as hard as his legs will carry him and meets a man who is actually wearing the watch that this Bumpkin or Pumpkin charges him with stealing. He, the learned counsel, would call witness after witness to speak to the character of his client, who was an engraver (I believe he was an engraver of bank notes); he would call witness after witness who would tell them how long they had known him, and how long he had had the watch; and, curiously enough, such curious things did sometimes almost providentially take place in a Court of Justice, he would call the very man that poor Mr. Simpleman had purchased it of five years ago, when he was almost, as you might say, in the first happy blush of boyhood (that ‘blush of boyhood’ went down with many of the jury who were fond of pathos); let the jury only fancy! but really would it be safe—really would it be safe, let him ask them upon their consciences, which in after life, perhaps years to come, when their heads were on their pillows, and their hands upon their hearts, (here several of the jury audibly sniffed), would those consciences upbraid, or would those consciences approve them for their work to-day? would it be safe to convict after the exhibition the prosecutor had made of himself in that box, where, he ventured to say, Bumpkin stood self-condemned before that intelligent jury.”
