Others, who also owned they were not teetotalers, although they were for the most part habitual drunkards, swore that Chegwidden was a sober man, and they had never seen him the worse for liquor. They did not add it was because they had been probably too drunk to see anything. Their evidence was accepted, although the magistrates might have known that it is impossible to obtain evidence which will incriminate a commoner from his own parishioners. They will give evidence against a man of the next parish, but not against one of their own. In such a case perjury is not with them a fault, but a virtue. The members of a parish hang together. They may hate each other, curse each other, fight with each other, but they will not give evidence against one another before outsiders. Brightly lived nowhere apparently, having no parish and no clan; therefore any one was prepared to give evidence against him, more especially as he had attacked one of themselves. His guilt was clear enough. The members of the Bench could not in their hearts believe that he had overpowered a strong man like Chegwidden; but the testimony of the clothes could not be set aside. It was obvious he had stolen them. The constable gave him a bad character. There was no doubt he had been guilty of all kinds of grievous offences, only he was such an artful creature that he had hitherto succeeded in evading the law. He feigned to be asthmatic and half blind in order that he might secure a reputation for inoffensiveness; and he pretended to go about the moor buying rabbit-skins, while it was suspected that his real motive was to steal from farm-houses, or to pass on any information he might acquire in his wanderings to a gang of burglars who had not as yet been apprehended. The constable made up a very pretty story against Brightly. The little man listened and tried not to be amazed. So he had been a rascal all the time and had never known it. No doubt it was true, for the gentlemen said so. He had pleaded not guilty, but he could not be sure about it, and he began to suspect that he must have told them a lie.