“Pogson's made a mistake in calling her,” said a briefless barrister to one of his companions in adversity; they both spent their lives in hanging about the courts, thankful when they could get a bit of “deviling.”
“Right you are!” replied the other, putting up his eyeglass to look at Erica, and letting it drop after a brief survey. “I'd bet twenty to one that girl loses him his case. And I'm hanged if he doesn't deserve to.”
“Well, it is rather a brutal thing to make a man's own child give evidence against him. Halloo! Just look at Raeburn! That man's either a consummate actor, or else a living impersonation of righteous anger.”
“No acting there,” replied the other, putting up his eyeglass again. “It's lucky dueling is a thing of the past or I expect Pogson would have a bullet in his heart before the day was over. I don't wonder he's furious, poor fellow! Now, then here's old Cringer working himself up into his very worst temper!”
The whispered dialogue was interrupted for a few minutes but was continued at intervals.
“By Jove, what a voice she's got! The jury will be flints if they are not influenced by it. Ah, you great brute! I wouldn't have asked her that question for a thousand pounds! How lovely she looks when she blushes! He'll confuse her, though, as sure as fate. No, not a bit of it! That was dignified, wasn't it? How the words rang, 'Of course not!' I say, Jack, this will be as good as a lesson in elocution for us!”
“Raeburn looks up at that for the first time. Well, poor devil! However much baited, he can, at any rate, feel proud of his daughter.”
Then came a long pause. For the fire of questions was so sharp that the two would not break the thread by speaking. Once or twice some particularly irritating question was ruled by the judge to be inadmissible, upon which Mr. Cringer looked, in a hesitatingly courteous manner, toward him, and obeyed orders with a smiling deference; then, facing round upon Erica, with a little additional venom, he visited his annoyance upon her by exerting all his unrivaled skill in endeavoring to make her contradict herself.
“You'll make nothing of this one, Cringer,” one of his friends had said to him at the beginning of Erica's evidence. And he had smiled confidently by way of reply. All the more was he now determined not to be worsted by a young girl whom he ought to be able to put out of countenance in ten minutes.
The result of this was that, in the words of the newspaper reports, “the witness's evidence was not concluded when the court rose.” This was perhaps the greatest part of the trial to Erica. She had hoped, not only for her own, but for her father's sake, that her evidence might all be taken in one day, and Mr. Cringer, while really harming his own cause by prolonging her evidence, inflicted no slight punishment on the most troublesome witness he had ever had to deal with.