Page:Stevenson - Weir of Hermiston (1896).djvu/62

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WEIR OF HERMISTON

do this, ye auld runt?' the Court interposed. 'Do ye mean to tell me ye was the panel's mistress?'

'If you please, ma loard,' whined the female.

'Godsake! ye made a bonny couple,' observed his lordship; and there was something so formidable and ferocious in his scorn that not even the galleries thought to laugh.

The summing up contained some jewels.

'These two peetiable creatures seem to have made up thegither, it 's not for us to explain why.'—'The panel, who (whatever else he may be) appears to be equally ill set-out in mind and boady.'—'Neither the panel nor yet the old wife appears to have had so much common sense as even to tell a lie when it was necessary.' And in the course of sentencing, my lord had this obiter dictum: 'I have been the means, under God, of haanging a great number, but never just such a disjaskit rascal as

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