“Tipstaff! take that man into—” “When you hear of a mandamus from the King's Bench—when you know that a case of compounding a felony—”
“Come away, Mr. Morissy; come quiet, sir!” said the police-sergeant.
“What were ye saying of a mandamus?” said the judge, getting frightened at the dreaded word.
“I was saying this, sir,” said Morissy, turning fiercely round; “that I am possessed of information which you refused to hear, and which will make the voice of the Chief Justice heard in this court, which now denies its ear to truth.”
“Conduct yourself more becomingly, sir,” said one of the county magistrates, “and open your case.”
Morissy, who was far more submissive to the gentry than to the chairman, at once replied in his blandest tone:—
“Your worship, it is now more than a month since I appeared before you in the case of Noonan versus M'Quade and others,—an aggravated case of homicide; I might go further, and apply to it the most awful term the vocabulary of justice contains! Your worship will remember that on that very interesting and important case a document was missing, of such a character that the main feature of the case seemed actually to hang upon it. This was no less than the deathbed confession of Noonan, formally taken before a justice of the peace, Mr. Styles, and written with all the accurate regard to circumstances the law exacts. Mr. Styles, the magistrate who took the deposition, was killed by a fall from his horse the following week; his clerk being ill, the individual who wrote the case was Con Cregan. Your worship may bear in mind that this man, when called to the witness box, denied all knowledge of this dying confession; asserted that what he took down in writing were simply some brief and unsatisfactory notes of the affray, all to the advantage of the M'Quades, and swore that Mr. Styles, who often alluded to the document as a confession, was entirely in error, the whole substance of it being unimportant and vague; some very illegible and-ill-written notes corroborating which were produced in court as the papers in question.
“Noonan being dead, and Mr. Styles also, the whole case rested on the evidence of Cregan; and although, your worship, the man's character for veracity was not of that nature among the persons of his own neighborhood to—”
“Confine yourself to the case, sir,” said the judge, “without introducing matter of mere common report.”
“I am in a position to prove my assertion,” said Morissy, triumphantly. “I hold here in my hand the abstracted documents, signed and sealed by Mr. Styles, and engrossed with every item of regularity. I have more: a memorandum purporting to be a copy of a receipt for eighteen pounds ten shillings, received by Cregan from Jos. M'Quade, the wages of this crime; and, if more were necessary, a promissory note from M'Quade for an additional sum of seven pounds, at six months' date. These are the papers which I am prepared to prove in court; this the evidence which a few minutes back I tendered in vain before you; and there,” said he, turning with a vindictive solemnity to where my father was standing, pale, but collected, “there's the man who, distinguished by your worship's confidence, I now arraign for the suppression of this evidence, and the composition of a felony!”