That was adding fuel to fire. Two of a trade don't agree. Dovey and Dobbs were both blacksmiths: the one in Church Dykely; the other in Piefinch Cut, not much more, so to say, than a stone's-throw from each other. The men were good friends enough; but their respective ladies were apt to regard jealously all work taken to the rival establishment. Any other of the jurymen might have made the remark with comparative impunity; not so Dobbs. And, besides the turn the inquiry seemed to be taking, Mrs. Dovey had not been easy about it in her mind from the first; proof of which was furnished by the call, already mentioned, made by her husband on Abel Crew. "Dovey takes pills on occasion, do he!" she shrilly retorted. "And what do you take, Bill Dobbs? Pints o' beer when you can get 'em. Who lamed Poole's white horse the t'other day a-shoeing him?" "Silence!" sternly interrupted the coroner. While Dobbs, conscious of the self-importance imparted to him by the post he was now filling, and of the necessity of maintaining the dignity of demeanour which he was apt to put on with his best clothes, bore the aspersion with equanimity and a stolid face. "Attend to me, witness, and confine yourself to replying to the questions I put to you," continued the coroner. "Did you take with you any pills or pill-box of your own when you went to Mrs. Reed's that evening?" "No, I _didn't_," returned Ann Dovey, the emphasis culminating in a sob: and why she should have set on to shiver and shake was more than the jury could understand. "Do you wear pockets?" "What if I do?" she said, after a momentary pause. But her lips grew white, and I thought she was trying to brave it out. "Had you a pocket on that evening?" "Heaven be good to me!" I heard her mutter under her breath. And if ever I saw a woman look frightened nearly to death, Ann Dovey looked it then. "Had you a pocket on that evening, witness?" repeated the coroner, sharply. "Y--es." "What articles were in it? Do you recollect?" "It were a key or two," came the answer at length, her very teeth chattering and all the impudence suddenly gone out of her. "And my thimble, sir;--and some coppers; and a part of a nutmeg;--and--and I don't remember nothing else, sir." "No box of pills? You are sure you had not that?" "Haven't I said so, sir?" she rejoined, bursting into a flood of tears. For which, and for the sudden agitation, nobody could see any reason: and perhaps it was only that which made the coroner harp upon the same string. Her demeanour had become suspicious. "You had no poison of any kind in your pocket, then?" But he asked the question in jest more than earnest. For when she went into hysterics instead of replying, he let her go. He was used to seeing witnesses scared when brought before him.