The magistrate, Mr. Goring, as having taken the most active part in the proceedings, was subjected to a long and searching cross-examination by Jones, who appeared to imply that some private source of dislike to Cashel had been the animating cause of his zeal in this instance.
Although not a single fact arose to give a shade of color to this suspicion, the lawyer clung to it with the peculiar pertinacity that often establishes by persistence when it fails in proof; and so pointedly and directly at last, that the learned judge felt bound to interfere, and observe, that nothing in the testimony of the respected witness could lay any ground for the insinuation thrown out by the counsel.
Upon this there ensued one of those sharp altercations between Bench and Bar which seem the “complement” of every eventful trial in Ireland; and which, after a brief contest, usually leave both the combatants excessively in the wrong.
The present case was no exception to this rule. The Judge was heated and imperious; the counsel flippant in all the insolence of mock respect, and ended by the stereotyped panegyric on the “glorious sanctity that invests the counsel of a defence in a criminal action—the inviolability of a pledge which no member of the Bar could suffer to be sullied in his person”—and a great many similar fine things, which, if not “briefed” by the attorney, are generally paid for by the client! The scrimmage ended, as it ever does, by a salute of honor; in which each, while averring that he was incontestably right, bore testimony to the conscientious scruples and delicate motives of the other; and at last they bethought them of the business for which they were there, and of him whose fate for life or death was on the issue. The examination of Mr. Goring was renewed.
“You have told us, sir,” said Jones, “that immediately after the terrible tidings had reached Tubbermore of Mr. Kennyfeck's death, suspicion seemed at once to turn on Mr. Cashel. Will you explain this, or at least let us hear how you can account for a circumstance so strange?”
“I did not say as much as you have inferred,” replied Goring. “I merely observed that Mr. Cashel's name became most singularly mixed up with the event, and rumors of a difference between him and his agent were buzzed about.”
“Might not this mention of Mr. Cashel's name have proceeded from an anxious feeling on the part of his friends to know of his safety?”
“It might.”
“Are you not certain that it was so?”
“In one instance, certainly. I remember that a gentleman at once drew our attention to the necessity of seeing after him.”