Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/501

1866.] this kind? I mean, have you inspected murdered bodies?

Surgeon. Yes.

Prisoner. How many?

Surgeon. Two before this.

Prisoner. O, pray, pray, do not say "before this"! I have great hopes no murder at all hath been committed here. Let us keep to plain cases. Please you describe the injuries in those two undoubted cases.

Surgeon. In Wellyn's the skull was fractured in two places. In Sherrett's the right arm was broken, and there were some contusions on the head; but the cause of death was a stab that penetrated the lungs.

Prisoner. Suppose Wellyn's murderers had thrown his body into the water, and the fishes had so mutilated it as they have this one, could you by your art have detected the signs of violence?

Surgeon. Certainly. The man's skull was fractured. Wellyn's, I mean.

Prisoner. I put the same question with regard to Sherrett's.

Surgeon. I cannot answer it; here the lungs were devoured by the fishes; no signs of lesion can be detected in an organ that has ceased to exist.

Prisoner. This is too partial. Why select one injury out of several? What I ask is this: could you have detected violence in Sherrett's case, although the fishes had eaten the flesh off his body.

Surgeon. I answer that the minor injuries of Sherrett would have been equally perceptible; to wit, the bruises on the head, and the broken arm; but not the perforation of the lungs; and that it was killed the man.

Prisoner. Then, so far as you know, and can swear, about murder, more blows have always been struck than one, and some of the blows struck in Sherrett's case, and Wellyn's, would have left traces that fishes' teeth could not efface?

Surgeon. That is so, if I am to be peevishly confined to my small and narrow experience of murdered bodies. But my general knowledge of the many ways in which life may be taken by violence—

The judge stopped him, and said that could hardly be admitted as evidence against his actual experience.

The prisoner put a drawing of the castle, the mere, and the bridge, into the witnesses' hands, and elicited that it was correct, and also the distances marked on it. They had, in fact, been measured exactly for her.

The hobnailed shoes were produced, and she made some use of them, particularly in cross-examining Jane Bannister.

Prisoner. Look at those shoes. Saw you ever the like on Mr. Gaunt's feet?

Jane. That I never did, Dame.

Prisoner. What, not when he came into the kitchen on the 15th of October?

Jane. Nay, he was booted. By the same token I saw the boy a cleaning of them for supper.

Prisoner. Those boots, when you broke into his room, did you find them?

Jane. Nay, when the man went his boots went; as reason was. We found naught of his but a soiled glove.

Prisoner. Had the pedler boots on?

Jane. Alas! who ever seed a booted pedler?

Prisoner. Had he these very shoes on? Look at them.

Jane. I couldn't say for that. He had shoon, for they did properly clatter on my bricks.

Judge. Clatter on her bricks! What in the world does she mean?

Prisoner. I think she means on the floor of her kitchen. 'T is a brick floor, if I remember right.

Judge. Good woman, say, is that what you mean?

Jane. Ay, an 't please you, my lord.

Prisoner. Had the pedler a mole on his forehead?

Jane. Not that I know on. I never took so much notice of the man. But, la, dame, now I look at you, I don't believe you was ever the one to murder our master.