Old William Bradbury was the next and only other witness for the prosecution. He had been out of court during the examination of his son. He walked to the witness-box with bent shoulders and feeble and faltering steps, leaning heavily upon his stick. The impression he designed to convey was clearly that of extreme age and debility, badly mauled in the discharge of duty. He told his story, the same tale as that unfolded by his son in his examination-in-chief, in a cringing, fawning voice. The course of his cross-examination I need not follow. It went on the same lines as that of Tom. When Mr. Blackburn asked the momentous question as to the conversation between the witness and his son at Pots and Pans the old gamekeeper gasped for breath. His eye wandered to where Tom sat in the body of the Court. "Oh! you needn't look for inspiration to your son," ripped out Mr. Blackburn. "Let us have the tale in your own way." "Aw dunnot know what th' young fooil's said," he babbled, "but what ya'r Tom said aw stick to." "I daresay, but that won't do for me. Where is the brace of hares you and your son had with you when you secreted yourself in the warren to await the coming of the prisoner?" "Wheer does ya'r Tom say they are?" fenced the witness. "I rather think, he began to say, you'd eaten them." "Then etten 'em we han, yo' may be sewer." "And what about those you've produced? Have you examined their teeth?" "What han I to do wi' their teeth?" "Well, look now, and tell me if the two front teeth in each hare don't appear to have been snapped off." Old William took up a dead hare and bared its teeth. "Now the other," urged Mr. Blackburn. "Well?" "It looks summat like it, to be sewer," conceded the gamekeeper. "Well, what do you make of it?" William scratched his head. Then a light illumined his countenance. "It'll happen be a birth-mark; that's it, a birth-mark,--and at a sign from Mr. Blackburn stepped from the box much more nimbly than he had entered it. "That's the case, your Worships," said Mr Alison. "Now, Mr. Blackburn," said the clerk. "I don't purpose wasting your Worships' time by any opening remarks. I shall call my witnesses, and after you have heard what they have to say your Worships will have had the story of as pretty a conspiracy to damn an innocent man as has ever been exposed in this or any other Court of Justice. ----Holmes." I stepped into the witness-box, and, as I took the greasy Testament in my hand and kissed the book in obedience to the clerk's command, heartily wished myself a thousand miles away. I saw the magistrates, and the lawyers, and the crowd in a blurred maze, my knees gave under my weight, and the only thing real in all the universe appeared to be the ledge of the witness-box, to which I clung desperately.