press. This was the source of his information as to Blaydes’s latest whereabouts. He owned to no such information at all. The meeting was a chance meeting, that was to be his solitary lie.
He told it and it passed unchallenged; but when he came to the transaction of the watch, the solicitor’s eyebrows shot to such an involuntary height, that the glib flow froze that instant.
“Go on, go on.”
“You don’t believe a word I say!”
“Nonsense, my good fellow. I believe every word. Come, come, they’re getting impatient. You gave him a receipt—and then?”
Tom finished with a leaden heart and tongue. To his surprise, however, Mr. Bassett was all smiles when he had done; then he put a few questions; and the lamer the answer, the sprightlier the solicitor’s nod. The latter, in fact, foresaw a defence about as weak as one could be, but a case even more sensational than he had supposed. And sensation happened to be this brisk practitioner’s professional loadstar.
Proceedings were resumed at two minutes past eleven, when the witness Adcock, recalled, identified a pair of dilapidated shoes, and the mutilated elements of a beaver, as having belonged to the accused. Bassett had no idea what point the prosecution designed to make, but at once he gave a taste of his quality. He pressed the witness, and shook her as to the hat; but to the shoes she stood firm; she had cleaned them oft enough, so she ought to know. Then she cleaned the lodgers’ boots herself? Well, not all; and an adroit question or two revealed the fact that Erichsen had been her pet, and “one it was a pleasure to do for,” against whom she had
