Cities and towns -- Growth -- Fiction; Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
And so it went on, hour after hour, with the English evidence likewise
translated for the benefit of the defendants. At the end of the first
day the case was adjourned, but it came on again on the morrow, and
again on the day after that. It began to dam all other business. As a
block in traffic causes an accumulation behind, so other cases began to
collect--drunks, dog-licences, drivings without lights, and innumerable
other petty disputes. There was no question that the fences had been
burned; the only question was whether they had got hold of the right
men. The Bench could not understand the obstinacy with which the two
Lancashire witnesses persisted that the outrage had occurred at exactly
ten o'clock.
"But mightn't it have been half-past ten, or eleven, or even half-past
eleven?" they were asked again and again.
"Ah, it might," they admitted open-mindedly. "But it wasn't," they added
unshakably.
Dafydd Dafis wanted to know what they said.
"Oh, translate it," the Squire sighed, and for the fortieth time it was
translated.
"_R'oeddwn efo John Willie Garden_," said Dafydd once more....
And that was great glory for John Willie, for he was called, asked
whether he knew the nature of an oath, was sworn, and raised a general
laugh by varying the formula with which the Court was not so drearily
familiar, and saying, in Welsh, "_Dim Cymraeg._" He stood to it that at
ten o'clock Dafydd Dafis had been talking to him by Pritchard's
manure-heap.
"Oh, for God's sake settle it or do something!" the Squire said
impatiently to Terry Armfield, as he crossed the road to the Station
Hotel for lunch. "You can't say I didn't warn you."
"I doubt whether my own witnesses would let me now," Terry replied.
"They're as cranky in their way as your own Fenians. Besides, as I told
you, I'm acting for others."
"Well, if I bind 'em over they'll only do it again," sighed the Squire.
Terry himself began to weary. After all, he had other things to mind
than a piece of beggarly waste land dotted with Chapels that were a
blasphemy of the name of beauty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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