"Never mind what you think; you give me back my property, or I'll give the whole lot of you in custody." The parcel was restored to him. He brandished it aloft. "There you are, you see, a lot of grown men go and steal another man's property, and you treat it as a joke. A mere lad goes and looks at a truss of mouldy hay, and you want to ruin him for life. And you call that justice! You ain't going to get me to take a hand in no such justice, so I tell you straight!" "It went a little farther than 'looks,' didn't it, Mr. Longsett? 'Looks' won't carry even mouldy hay three miles across country." "And 'looks' won't carry my property from where I'm sitting down to where you are! If Jim Bailey's a thief, so's Tom Elliott--there's no getting over that. Why ain't we sitting on him instead of on that there young 'un?" "See here, Jacob." Mr. Timmins stretched out towards him his open palm. "Here's a sporting offer for you: if you'll bring Jim Bailey in guilty, I'll bring in Tom Elliott!" "I won't bring in neither; the one's no more a thief than the other." "Nice for you, Tom, eh?" "Oh, I don't mind. I know Jacob. It's not the first time a member of your family's been in trouble, is it, Jacob?" "By----! if you say that again I'll knock the life right out of you!" The foreman rapped upon the table. "Order, gentlemen, order! Keep to the business in hand, if you please." Mr. Longsett confronted him, towering over Elliott, with clenched fists and flashing eyes. "Keep him in order then--don't keep on at me! You make him keep a civil tongue in his head, or I will." He glared round the board. "I don't care for the whole damned lot of you. I'm as good as any one of you--perhaps better! I'm here to do my duty according to my conscience and conviction, and I'm going to do it, and I say not guilty, and if we stop here till Christmas you won't make me say no different!" This announcement was followed by an interval of silence; then Captain Rudd attempted to voice the sense of the meeting. "In that case, Mr. Foreman, we may as well intimate to the court that we are unable to agree." "What'll be the consequence of that?" "The prisoner'll have to stand another trial, when, should none of his relations happen to be upon the jury, there will be no hesitation about bringing in a verdict of guilty--in which case the young scamp will get his deserts." Stretching his body across the table, Jacob shook his clenched fist in the speaker's face. "Look here, Captain Rudd, you may be a captain, but you're no blooming gentleman, or you wouldn't talk like that. Captain or no captain, the next time you say anything about Jim Bailey being a relation of mine I'll crack you in the mouth!" Straightening himself, Jacob shook his fist at the eleven. "And I say the same to every one of you. It's no affair of yours what Jim Bailey is to me--so just you mind it."