Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/160

140 “So you think—”

But words failed him, and he said no more.

That hour of respite was the longest of the day.

Tom was thankful to be back in court.

The principal witnesses of the afternoon were Mrs. Adcock, Jonathan Butterfield and the diminutive householder of Kew. Thus the trio who had made the world seem so kind a fortnight before, now typified its cruelty; for the evidence of the first two was reluctant but damning, and that of the last was supplementary in matter, but given with the officious venom and the transparent exultation of a personal foe.

But his old landlady shed tears as she described her last interview with the prisoner at the bar. It was with difficulty that things which Tom had said on that occasion, and to which she had already sworn at Marylebone, could be wrung a second time from her unwilling lips. “I’ll pay him” and “I’ll break every bone in his infernal body” were not the worst of the words which were extracted by degrees. Then the stick was produced in court; and the knob that had been so clean and creamy was now clotted over with a scaly, russet skin, like a coat of glue, at sight of which the witness turned as white as her hair and was given a glass of water in the box. The stick was then duly identified; the jury informed that the prisoner had described it to witness as “a rod in pickle” for the deceased; and the witness allowed to stand down, after a brief but painful cross-examination, in which the good soul’s fondness for Tom was betrayed by signs that touched him as deeply as anything could just then. His brain was reeling under the dread weight of her evidence against him; he felt its