"Look about you, old woman, and tell us if you see the man."
"Nay, good sir, my wits wander and I do not remember as I used."
As Philip Marsham watched her hard face, so very old and crafty, he paid little heed to the low voices of the proctors and the Judge. But the sharp command, "Look this man in the face and tell us if you have ever seen him before," came to the erstwhile boatswain of the Rose of Devon like the shock of cold water to a man lying asleep.
They led her before Tom Jordan—before the Old One himself—and the two looked each other full in the face, yet neither fluttered an eye. In all truth they were a cool pair; it had taken a Solomon to say which of them was now the subtler.
"Nay, my lord, how should I know this man? He hath the look of an honest fellow, my lord, but I never saw him ere this."
Thereupon the officers exchanged glances and the proctors whispered together.
They led her before Martin Barwick and again she shook her old white head. "Nay, my lord, I know him not." But Martin was swallowing hard, as if some kind of pip had beset him, and this did not escape the notice of the Court.
Down the line of accused men she came and, though she walked in the shadow of the gallows, she said of each, in her shrill, quavering old voice, "Nay, my lord, I know him not."
Of some she spoke thus in all truth; of others, though she knew it would cost her life, she craftily and stoutly lied. And at last she came to Philip Marsham, whose heart chilled when he met the sharp eyes that had looked so hard into his own in Bideford long before. "Nay, my lord, he is a handsome blade, but I never saw him ere this." Some smiled and sniggered; but the old woman shrugged, and lifted her brows, and stood before the Court, wrinkled and bent by years of wickedness. Say what you will of her sins, her courage and loyalty were worthy of a better cause.
In despair of pinning her down, they led her away at last to a bench and there she sat with officers to guard her. Now she watched one man and now she watched another. Often Philip Marsham felt a tremor, almost of fear, at seeing her eyes looking hard into his own. But though of the old woman the Court had made nothing, the exultation that showed in the faces of some of the prisoners was premature, for the Lords of Admiralty had other shafts to their bow, as any gentleman of fortune might have known they would.