The Shadow of a Crime Part 62

As she spoke the woman recoiled to the back of the box, and covered her face in her hands.

"What manner of man was the taller one?" "He had a strong face with big features and large eyes. I saw him indistinctly."

"Do you see him now?".

"I cannot swear; but--but I think I do."

"Is the prisoner who stands to the left the man you saw that night?"

"The voice is the same, the face is similar, and he wears the same habit--a long dark coat lined with light flannel."

"Is that all you know of the matter?"

"I knew that a crime had been committed in my sight. I felt that a dead body lay close beside me. I was about to turn away, when I heard a third man come up and speak to the man on the horse."

"You knew the voice?"

"It was the cottager who had given us shelter. I ran back to the barn, s.n.a.t.c.hed up my two children in their sleep, and fled away across the fields--I know not where."

Justice Hide asked the witness why she had not spoken of this before; three months had elapsed since then.

She replied that she had meant to do so, but it came into her mind that perhaps the cottager was somehow concerned in the crime, and she remembered how good he and his daughter had been to her.

"How had she come to make the disclosures now?"

The witness explained that when she crushed her way into the court a week ago it was with the idea that the prisoner might be her husband.

He was not her husband, but when she saw his face she remembered that she had seen him before. A man in the body of the court had followed her out and asked her questions.

"Who was the man?" asked the judge, turning to the sheriff.

The gentleman addressed pointed to a man near at hand, who rose at this reference, with a smile of mingled pride and cunning, as though he felt honored by this public disclosure of his astuteness. He was a small man with a wrinkled face, and a sinister cast in one of his eyes, which lay deep under s.h.a.ggy brows. We have met him before.

The judge looked steadily at him as he rose in his place. After a minute or two he turned again to look at him. Then he made some note on a paper in his hand.

The witness looked jaded and worn with the excitement. During her examination Sim had never for an instant upraised his eyes from the ground. The eagerness with which Ralph had watched her was written in every muscle of his face. When liberty was given him to question her, he asked in a soft and tender voice if she knew what time of the night it might be when she had seen what she had described.

Between nine and ten o'clock as near as she could say, perhaps fully ten.

Was she sure which side of the bridge she was on--north or south?

"Sure; it was north of the bridge."

Ralph asked if the records of the coroner's inquiry were at hand. They were not. Could he have them examined? It was needless. But why?

"Because," said Ralph, "it was sworn before the coroner that the body was found to the south of the bridge--fifty yards to the south of it."

The point was treated with contempt and some derisive laughter. When Ralph pressed it, there was humming and hissing in the court.

"We must not expect that we can have exact and positive proof," said Justice Millet; "we would come as near as we can to circ.u.mstances by which a fact of this dark nature can be proved. It is easy for a witness to be mistaken on such a point."

The young woman Margaret Rushton was being dismissed.

"One word," said Justice Hide. "You say you have heard your husband speak of the prisoner Ray; how has he spoken of him?"

"How?--as the bravest gentleman in all England!" said the woman eagerly.

Sim lifted his head, and clutched the rail. "G.o.d--it's true, it's true!" he cried hysterically, in a voice that ran through the court.

"My lords," said counsel, "you have heard the truth wrung from a reluctant witness, but you have not heard all the circ.u.mstances of this horrid fact. The next witness will prove the motive of the crime."

A burly c.u.mbrian came into the box, and gave the name of Thomas Scroope. He was an agent to the King's counsel. Ralph glanced at him.

He was the man who insulted the girl in Lancaster.

He said he remembered the defendant Ray as a captain in the trained bands of the late Parliament. Ray was always proud and arrogant. He had supplanted the captain whose captaincy he afterwards held.

"When was that?"

"About seven years agone," rejoined the witness; adding in an undertone, and as though chuckling to himself, "he's paid dear enough for that sin' then."

Ralph interrupted.

"Who was the man I supplanted, as you say--the man who has made me pay dear for it, as you think?"

No answer.

"Who?"

"No matter that," grumbled the witness. His facetiousness was gone.

There was some slight stir beneath the jurors' box.

"Tell the court the name of the man you mean."

Counsel objected to the time of the court being wasted with such questions.

Justice Hide overruled the objection.

Amid much sensation, the witness gave the name of the sheriff of c.u.mberland, Wilfrey Lawson.

Continuing his evidence in a defiant manner, the witness said he remembered the deceased agent, James Wilson. He saw him last the day before his death. It was in Carlisle they met. Wilson showed witness a warrant with which he was charged for Ray's arrest, and told him that Ray had often threatened him in years past, and that he believed he meant to take his life. Wilson had said that he intended to be beforehand, for the warrant was a sure preventive. He also said that the Rays were an evil family; the father was a hard, ungrateful brute, who had ill repaid him for six years' labor. The mother was best; but then she was only a poor simple fool. The worst of the gang was this Ralph, who in the days of the Parliament had more than once threatened to deliver him--Wilson--to the sheriff--the other so-called sheriff, not the present good gentleman.

Ralph asked the witness three questions.

"Have we ever met before?"

"Ey, but we'll never meet again, I reckon," said the man, with a knowing wink.

"Did you serve under me in the army of the Parliament?"