The Red Court Farm: A Novel (Vol. 1 of 2)Wood, Henry, Mrs.
General
The Red Court Farm: A Novel (Vol. 1 of 2)
Wood, Henry, Mrs.
English fiction -- 19th century
The difference of opinion touching the lights at the railway station
on the night of the fatal accident, continued to create no small
sensation. The jury turned nearly rampant; vowing they'd not attend
the everlastingly adjourned inquest, and wanting every time to return
no verdict at all, say they could not, and have done with it. The
coroner told them that was impossible; though he avowed that he did
not see his way clearly out of it. But for being the responsible
party, he would have willingly pitched the whole affair into the sea.
Over and over again did the public recount the circumstances one with
another. When anybody could get hold of a stranger, hitherto in happy
ignorance, he thought himself in luck, and went gushingly into all the
details. It was a stock-in-trade for the local newspapers; and two of
them entered on a sharp weekly controversy in regard to it. In truth,
the matter, that is the conflict in the evidence, was most remarkable.
That one party should stand to it the lights were red, and that the
other should maintain they were green, was astonishing from the simple
fact that both sides were worthy of credit. In the earlier stage of
the enquiry the coroner had significantly remarked upon the "hard
swearing somewhere:" it seemed more of a mystery than ever on which
side that reproach could attach to. The jury could arrive at no
decision, and thus the inquest had been adjourned time after time, and
now the county was getting tired of it. Cooper, meanwhile suspended
from employment, stood a chance of being reduced to straits if it
lasted much longer. The colonel and Oliver Jupp, who had become
intimate, made rather merry over it when they met, each accusing the
other of having "seen double;" but neither would give way an inch. The
lawyers were confounded, and knew not which side to believe; neither
of the two gentlemen had the slightest personal interest in the
matter; they spoke to further the ends of justice alone, and the one
and the other were alike worthy of credit.
Affairs were in this unsatisfactory state, when a gentleman arrived in
the neighbourhood on a short sojourn, a Dr. Macpherson, LL.D., F.R.S.,
and so on; about seventeen letters in all he could put after his name
if he chose to do it. He was a man great in science, had devoted the
most part of his life to it, no branch came amiss to him; he had
travelled much and was renowned in the world. Amidst other
acquirements he had phrenology at his fingers' ends, being as much at
home in it as we poor unlearned mortals are in reading a newspaper; or
as Mr. Lake was in making himself agreeable to a pretty woman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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