"No."
"Did he touch her hand at all?"
"I think he did just touch her hand."
"When he did touch her hand was she dead?"
At this last question the woman turned terribly pale, was seen to falter, and fell in a swoon on the ground, and so revealed the truth which she had come to deny.
CHAPTER XLI.
MR.J.L. TOOLE ON THE BENCH.
Sir Henry Hawkins was sitting at Derby Assizes in the Criminal Court, which, as usual in country towns, was crowded so that you could scarcely breathe, while the air you had to breathe was like that of a pestilence. There was, however, a little space left behind the dock which admitted of the passage of one man at a time.
Windows and doors were all securely closed, so as to prevent draught, for nothing is so bad as draught when you are hot, and nothing makes you so hot as being stived by hundreds in a narrow space without draught.
He happened to look up into the faces of this shining but by no means brilliant assembly, when what should he observe peeping over the shoulders of two buxom factory women with blue kerchiefs but the head of J.L. Toole! At least, it looked like Mr. Toole's head; but how it came there it was impossible to say. It was a delight anywhere, but it seemed now out of place.