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134 equally indistinct; for though he repeated his formula twelve times, “well and truly try” were the only words Tom ever caught. Then at the further end of the front row of wigs and gowns, there arose a somewhat diffident gentleman, who proceeded to open the case in a somewhat hesitating manner, which set Tom’s heart beating, for this was the senior counsel for the Crown. He did not seem at all a formidable person; his sentences had occasionally no middle, quite frequently no end; and his gentlemanly, mild face was in striking contrast to the powerful, rude visage of Mr. Serjeant Culliford, who sat trimming a quill, with half a smile upon his long, thin lips, the personification of confident superiority. Tom looked from the one to the other, and his beating heart leapt: it was a weak man with a strong case against a strong man with a weak case; there was a chance for him yet.

The first witness was the mechanic who had discovered the body. His testimony was very short. He had run straight for the police, leaving the blood-stained cudgel precisely where he had found it in the grass. This witness was not cross-examined, and the police-officer whom he had summoned soon replaced him in the box.

Matters here became a little technical. The position of the body was elaborately gone into, judge and jury examining a prepared plan of the scene which seemed to demand a deal of explanation. Either the witness was obscure or the jury dense; the dejected judge stood up himself to make things plain to them; and for several minutes the chief sounds in court were the judicial undertones and a continuous crinkling of tracing-paper. Tom wondered at the waste of time upon an infinitesimal point; he had never been at a trial before; and