“Is he so clever a lawyer then?” asked Mr. Webster as we rested in the parlour after our long, cold, tedious journey, and warmed ourselves as well as we could before a fire on which it seemed to me the coals were put on with the sugar tongs.
“Well,” said Mrs. Cooke, for that was the garrulous old lady’s name, “Of course he is a clever lawyer, tho’ they do say not so far learned nor so deep as some we’ve known in York in my time, but it isn’t that will help you in a case like this.”
“I do not take you, madam,” observed Mr. Webster.
“You see Mr. Brougham has a great name in the city with the Whigs, and if yo’ can get a sprinkling of them gentry on the jury it will go a great way in the poor young man’s favour.”
“All we ask is an upright and an intelligent jury,” said Mr. Webster.
“That’s all very well for you, sir, that’s safe and sound by a good fire and a clean soft bed before you. But from what I’ve read, sir, that young friend of yours will do better with a jury that will lean a bit; and trust Mr. Brougham for making the most of his chances with the jury.”
“Will he be allowed to speak to them?” I asked.
“Dear me, no,” said the lady, proud to air her knowledge of the law. “And a mercy it is it is so, for if such a counsellor as Mr. Brougham could talk to the jury for a prisoner, half the rogues now hanged would be walking the county. But there’s ways an’ means sides talking, a shrug, a question to a witness, a meaning look at the gentlemen in the box, and above all a quarrel with my lord.”
“What! quarrel with the judge?” exclaimed my father. “Surely that would be fatal.”
“Not a bit of it,” explained our landlady. “It’s the safest card of all to play. You see the judge is sure to be against the prisoner.”