"Tha's getten it agen--see what eddication 'll do. Identify--that were it, for a sovrin'. Nah, yo' see, one hare's varry like another, especially when they're dead. Yo' can pick 'em out when they're wick, if yo're used to 'em, for even a hare 'll ha' a look o' its own. But when they're dead it's different. So I were fair flummaxed. But Ruth theer weren't oo gate a pair tweezers, an' we snipped their front teeth, an' if them two hasn't teeth yo' may ca' Enoch Hoyle a liar, an he'll eit them hares, skin an' fur an' all. Oo tuk 'em away wi' her, an aw'n nivver seed 'em sin 'till this day o' our Lord." "Well, I think that will do, Mr. Hoyle, unless my friend would like to have a few words with you." "Not for a pension." said Mr. Alison, emphatically. "Perhaps them gentlemen up theer 'ud like to ax me summat," said Enoch. "Aw've noan said haulf mi nominy yet. Aw had prepared a few words anent the wickedness o' layin' i' wait to tak' another man's life, or what's awmost as bad, another man's liberty, an' we'n plenty o' time i' front of us…." "Stand down!" bawled a constable, and Enoch, with great dignity and with obvious reluctance, left the witness box, having, as he boasted all his life, confounded the mighty that sit in high places. "I suppose you can prove that these hares were handed to the prisoner?" asked the Clerk of Mr. Blackburn. "Certainly." The Clerk looked at Mr. Alison, and shrugged his shoulders "The biter's bit, eh? Now, Mr. Alison, what have _you_ to say?" "Nothing your Worships. The case is in your hands." "You may go, Young man," said the chairman to Ephraim. Then, such is the force of habit: "Let this be a lesson to you. You've escaped this time, thanks to the ingenuity of your friends; but the jug that goes oft to the well gets broken at last. The case is dismissed." And Ephraim stepped out of the dock a free man, amid cheers which the constable tried in vain to suppress. CHAPTER VI. I VISIT THE SICK IT was New Year's Eve, and Jim and I, much pressed thereto by his good mother, had resolved to attend the Watch Night Service in the Warping Room at Wrigley Mill, to watch the Old Year out and the New Year in. A marked change had come over my friend Jim in these latter days. He had foresworn all taverning, contenting himself with the modest home-brewed of the domestic table, and declaring that he hoped by this route to bring himself in time to treikle-drink, and maybe, though of this he was somewhat sceptical, to plain cold water, a beverage in whose favour all that could be alleged, Jim considered, was that it "cost nowt." He confessed to me, indeed, that he looked forward with the gloomiest apprehensions to a long existence unenlivened by an occasional spree. But he had made up his mind to "save his brass," and he knew from grim experience that a working man cannot spend his nights in an alehouse and save money out of his slender earnings.