"Do you know this man?" I read it.
"SIR,--I wull tell all truthe. Mr. Locke is a murdered man if he be hanged.
Lev me spek out, for love of the Lord.
"J. DAVIS."
No. I never had heard of him; and I let the paper fall.
A murdered man? I had known that all along. Had not the Queen's counsel
been trying all day to murder me, as was their duty, seeing that they got
their living thereby?
A few moments after, a labouring man was in the witness-box; and to my
astonishment, telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth.
I will not trouble the reader with his details, for they were simply
and exactly what I have already stated. He was badgered, bullied,
cross-examined, but nothing could shake him. With that dogged honesty, and
laconic dignity, which is the good side of the English peasant's character,
he stood manfully to his assertion--that I had done everything that words
or actions could do to prevent violence, even to the danger of my own
personal safety. He swore to the words which I used when trying to wrest
the desk from the man who had stolen it; and when the Queen's counsel asked
him, tauntingly, who had set him on bringing his new story there at the
eleventh hour, he answered, equally to the astonishment of his questioner,
and of me,
"Muster Locke, hisself.
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