“Yes, I did, and it beant true. There be no prejudice in the matter. I could have sed more if I’d bin amind.”
“Ah, I dare say; but now, with respect to identity, I think of the excessive difficulty with which the memory retains a face. Portrait painters of half a century’s standing will tell you that they hardly retain the impression of a sitter five minutes, though they have been studying him keenly, that their own first touches from him as he sits are invaluable helps; that they would all, if it were convenient for art reasons, like to keep a photograph in full view for their work when the original is away. We think we remember, but in five minutes we forget, the half of a friend’s face nearly as perfectly as we forget the whole of our own. Clearly if identification were as easy as we are apt to believe, we should not so forget faces. And their expression? Doubtless, expression being, so to speak, an intellectual rather than a physical fact, stirring and rousing the intellect of the observer, his secret and almost instinctive likes and dislikes, remains longer fixed in the mind than mere feature. The witness who arrested Judge Jeffries might have forgotten his face, did forget it, in fact, for Jeffries when seized had only changed his wig, but he could not forget the ferocious glare of those insufferable eyes. But expression changes quickly, may change permanently. We all say every now and then, ‘His face is quite changed,’ while nothing is changed except, perhaps, the expression and the colour. Madness, extreme anger, drink, will all change a well-known face till it is almost irrecognisable.”
“That may be all true,” said one of the company, “but somehow or another I do not think there’s much mistake ’bout that chap—he did the murder right enough.”
“Aye, an’ sure he did,” cried Brickett, “as sartain as I’m a speakin’ now—the black-hearted villain. It aint a morsel o’ good for any one for to be trying to argue us out o’ our seven senses. He be the man and none other.”
“Yes, that’s your opinion,” said Slapperton, “but it is not right and proper to hang a man upon mere opinion or hearsay.”
“Certainly not,” said an elderly gentleman, who was a stranger to them all. “It is requisite to have the clearest and most unanswerable evidence when a man is put upon his trial for a capital offence. I’ve seen a good deal in my time, have been to most parts of the world, and in early life I was concerned in a trial—was one of the jury in fact—and but for me the man would have been hanged.”
“Noe—noe,” cried several, with wondering looks.
“All juries do not always agree,” said Slapperton; “but perhaps our friend will give us the benefit of his experience.”
“Aye, do, sur. Let’s hear all about it,” cried several.
“Speaking of a jury’s disagreeing,” said the old gentleman, “I myself was once the cause of such an occurrence, and I can’t say that I ever regretted it since it saved not only the life of the prisoner, whom I believed to be an innocent man, but my own life.”