"Oh, sir, but my father may go free?" earnestly asked Grace. But Ben Burke's voice--I had almost written woice--overwhelmed them all:
"Let me speak, judge, an't it please your honour, and take you notice, Master Horsehair. You wan't ewidence, do you, beyond the man's confession: here, I'll give it you. Look at this here wice:" and he stretched forth his well-known huge and horny hand:
"When I caught that dridful little reptil by the arm, he wriggled like a sniggled eel, so I was forced you see, to grasp him something tighter, and could feel his little arm-bones crack like any chicken's: now then, if his left elbow an't black and blue, though it's a month a-gone and more, I'll eat it. Strip him and see."
No need to struggle with the man, or tear his coat off. Jennings appeared only too glad to find that there was other evidence than his own foul tongue, and that he might be hung at last without sacking-rope or gimlet; so, he quietly bared his arm, and the elbow looked all manner of colours--a mass of old bruises.
THE whole court trembled with excitement: it was deep, still silence; and the judge said,
"Prisoner at the bar, there is now no evidence against you: gentlemen of the jury, of course you will acquit him."
The foreman: "All agreed, my lord, not guilty."
"Roger Acton," said the judge, "to God alone you owe this marvellous, almost miraculous, interposition: you have had many wrongs innocently to endure, and I trust that the right feelings of society will requite you for them in this world, as, if you serve Him, God will in the next. You are honourably acquitted, and may leave this bar."
In vain the crier shouted, in vain the javelin-men helped the crier, the court was in a tumult of joy; Grace sprang to her father's neck, and Sir John Vincent, who had been in attendance sitting near the judge all the trial through, came down to him, and shook his hand warmly.
Roger's eyes ran over, and he could only utter,
"Thank God! thank God! He does better for me than I deserved." But the court was hushed at last: the jury rësworn; certain legal forms and technicalities speedily attended to, as counts of indictment, and so forth: and the judge then quietly said,
"My lurd, I claim to be prisoner's counsel."