Anyhow it was my father and Faith and Mr. Webster and myself that the Cornwallis took up at ten of the clock one morning in January at the sign of the Rose and Crown in Huddersfield. We might have joined it in Slaithwaite on its way through the village from Manchester, but we wanted to have as little talk and stir as possible. Mr. Blackburn's clerk had got us decent lodgings near the Castle with a widow woman who made a living by letting her rooms to witnesses attending the Assizes, and whose whole talk was of the counsellors she had heard plead. She was pleased to express her satisfaction when she learned we had secured Mr. Brougham to defend George. "Is he so clever a lawyer then?" asked Mr. Webster as we rested in the parlour after our long, cold, tedious journey, and warmed ourselves as well as we could before a fire on which it seemed to me the coals were put on with the sugar tongs. "Well," said Mrs. Cooke, for that was the garrulous old lady's name, "Of course he is a clever lawyer, tho' they do say not so far learned nor so deep as some we've known in York in my time, but it isn't that will help you in a case like this." "I do not take you, madam," observed Mr. Webster. "You see Mr. Brougham has a great name in the city with the Whigs, and if yo' can get a sprinkling of them gentry on the jury it will go a great way in the poor young man's favour." "All we ask is an upright and an intelligent jury," said Mr. Webster. "That's all very well for you, sir, that's safe and sound by a good fire and a clean soft bed before you. But from what I've read, sir, that young friend of yours will do better with a jury that will lean a bit; and trust Mr. Brougham for making the most of his chances with the jury." "Will he be allowed to speak to them?" I asked. "Dear me, no," said the lady, proud to air her knowledge of the law. "And a mercy it is it is so, for if such a counsellor as Mr. Brougham could talk to the jury for a prisoner, half the rogues now hanged would be walking the county. But there's ways an' means sides talking, a shrug, a question to a witness, a meaning look at the gentlemen in the box, and above all a quarrel with my lord." "What! quarrel with the judge?" exclaimed my father. "Surely that would be fatal." "Not a bit of it," explained our landlady. "It's the safest card of all to play. You see the judge is sure to be against the prisoner." "Nay, my good lady, surely nay," remonstrated Mr. Webster. "Ye shall do not unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour."