“Well, the cause was called, and up gets Peter, and he began to ‘express’, (as he always called it himself,) ‘the great distress his client and himself would labour under, if the patient and most intelligent jury then on the panel should come to the consideration of so very tedious a case as this promised to be, after their already most fatiguing exertions;’ he commented upon their absence from their wives and families, their farms neglected, their crops hazarded, and in about fifteen minutes he showed them they were, if not speedily released and sent home, worse treated and harder used than many of the prisoners condemned to three months imprisonment; and actually so far worked upon the feelings of the chief himself, that he turned to the foreman of the jury, and said, ‘that although it was a great deviation from his habitual practice, if at this pressing season their prospects were involved to the extent the learned counsel had pictured, why then, that he would so far bend his practice on this occasion, and they should be dismissed.’ Now Peter, I must confess, here showed the most culpable ignorance in not knowing that a set of country fellows, put up in a jury box, would rather let every glade of corn rot in the ground, than give up what they always supposed so very respectable an appointment; for they invariably imagine in these cases that they are something very like my lord the judge, ‘barrin’ the ermine;’ besides, that on the present occasion, Peter’s argument in their favour decided them upon staying, for they now felt like martyrs, and firmly believed that they were putting the chief justice under an obligation to them for life. “When, therefore, they heard the question of the court, it did not take a moment’s time for the whole body to rise en masses and bowing to the judge, call out, ‘We’ll stay, my lord, and try every mother’s son of them for you; ay, if it lasted till Christmas.