"Are you a freeholder of forty shillings a year?" he asked; and the judge taking him up, he was allowed counsel to argue the point, which was done at great length and with much talk of a couple of statutes, one dating from Henry V., the other from Queen Mary. It seemed that they contradicted one another, but I do not know. I only know that the sunlight, pouring through a high window on the east side, shifted like the spoke of a slow-revolving wheel, and was already withdrawing up the wall beneath the window when Jervas Rookley was called to give his evidence.
To this evidence I lent a careful ear, and could not but perceive that though there was little fact in the recital, yet innuendo so fitted with innuendo that it might well have weight with a jury already inclined to believe. But even this observation I was conscious of making rather as a matter of general interest than as one in which I was so intimately concerned. Rookley told of Herbert's coming to Keswick, how immediately he made Lord Derwentwater's acquaintance and was entrusted with the painting of Lady Derwentwater's portrait—a work which carried him daily to the house on Lord's Island. Then he proceeded to tell of his own journey to Paris, and how he found me a novice in a Jesuit College. The journey to Bar-le-Duc he omitted, but said that I had given him advice to wait for me in Paris and so had ridden off for close upon a week. The journey, said he, aroused his suspicions; on my return I had openly professed to him my adherence to the Stuarts, and had informed him that I had travelled to Commercy and had seen the Pretender. He went on to describe his discovery that I carried a letter and his failure to possess himself of it.
"Then you knew Mr. Clavering was a Jacobite so long ago as that!" interrupted Anthony Herbert. "How comes it you waited so long before you moved for his arrest, unless you had a finger in the Jacobite pie yourself?"
"The witness need answer nothing that would incriminate himself," interrupted the judge, quickly. "Besides, your turn will come. Let the King's Counsel finish!"
"There is no reason why I should shrink from answering it," said Jervas, readily. "There was some plot on foot, so much I knew. But what the plot was I knew not nor ever did; and had I laid the information against Lawrence Clavering then, I should myself have closed the avenues of knowledge."
"And what have you to say to that?" asked the judge of Herbert. "You will need more discretion if you are to save your neck." And he wagged his head at the prisoner.
"My Lord," answered Herbert, in a heat, "I shall not want for discretion so long as I do not go begging for justice."
I could see Mr. Doyle in the body of the court, nodding and frowning at his client in a great fluster. But it was already too late for his signs to have their effect.
"Justice!" roared the judge, turning to the jury. "Sirs, the fellow cries for justice as though it were a stranger to a jury of Englishmen. Nay, but justice he shall have, full measure. I am here to see to that;" and he sat glowering at the unfortunate prisoner.
For myself the outburst was no more than I expected, and I listened to it as to an oft-told tale.