Counsel for the defence.--"Not at all. The cause of the quarrel is immediately connected with the examination-in-chief. My learned friend does not venture to put the question in a leading shape, as some counsel would not scruple to do. But if we are overruled, I will so frame the question in one minute as to be unobjectionable in point of form, and perhaps less pleasant to those who seek a conviction, than in its present shape."
He spoke with some heat, and the question was allowed, and repeated.
Witness.--"Why, it was in January last, when there was little to be done in the garden, and I went away a bit before the time, because it was our club night. He jawed me about it, and said as long as he was head-gardener the men should keep their time."
Counsel.--"On the night of the fifth of February, I think you said that you did not know the prisoner had returned till you saw him?"
Witness.--"No, that I didn't."
Counsel, emphatically.--"I have done."
Witness re-examined.--"I think it was five o'clock when I met the prisoner, I cannot exactly say. I have a watch, but I do not always look at it: I did not that night. I guessed it was five, and I went."
The next witness was Mr. Andrew Woodyard, surgeon, who deposed that he had examined the dead body of a person who, he was informed, had been found in the grounds of Mr. Arthur Tracy, of Northferry House. He had discovered, he said, severe injuries on the head, consisting of a contusion over the left temple, and a contused wound further back, on the same side, which had fractured the skull and injured the brain. The latter was the immediate cause of death. It must have been inflicted with a sharp instrument. A blow from a Dutch hoe would probably produce all the appearances which he had observed. He had no doubt that the wound was the cause of death.
Counsel for the prosecution.--"Would such a blow always produce death as an inevitable consequence?"
Witness.--"No."