“I be quite sartin o’ that.”
“How can you be certain?”
“Because I know’d him so well, that is why I be so sartin. I know’d him by his brown face, beaky nose, an’ bushy whiskers.”
Mr. Slapperton was disappointed. The girl’s answers were so natural and truthful that every person in the court was impressed with the fact that her evidence could be relied on, and Mr. Slapperton felt that he would be only making matters worse by subjecting her to a severe and searching cross-examination.
“She is a truthful witness, my lord,” said the lawyer; “that is, an honest witness who speaks what she believes to be truth, but it does not follow that she may not be mistaken.”
“She has given her evidence remarkably well,” observed one of the magistrates, “and is a very intelligent little girl.”
“Now I have one or two more questions to put,” said Slapperton. “When you looked out of the bedroom window of the cottage, was the man’s back towards you or his face?”
“His face wur towards me.”
“And it was rather a dark night—was it not?”
“Noa, not whar I seed the man. The moon was a shinin’ quite bright loike.”