"Pray, what space of time do you think had elapsed," Harding next demanded, "between the time of your return to Ryebury, and your finding yourself in the boat?"
Beauchamp replied, that of course he could not exactly tell, but he imagined that it must have been more than an hour.
"If such was the case," said the prisoner, "then the moon, which you say was shining on the western side of the miser's house when you reached the door, must have set before you recovered your senses; and I should like to know, how, without any light on a dark night, and with your thoughts confused, as they must have been, after such a blow as you describe, you could recognise me so as to swear to my identity, when, by your own account, you could not stand up in the boat even for a moment."
"In the first place," answered Beauchamp, "the moon had not set, though she was setting, and her very position at the moment I did attempt to rise, showed me your features more distinctly than if she had been higher in the sky; for she shone at that moment under your hat. I was confused, certainly, and in that confusion I had very nearly called you by your name; but luckily I recollected in time the attack made upon my own person, and the extraordinary circumstances in which I was placed, or probably the consequences might have been fatal to me also."
"He should not have touched a hair of your head!" said Walter Harrison aloud, and the eyes of the whole court were instantly turned upon him; but the young man paused, and looked towards Harding, adding--"I do not want to interrupt him! Let him say his say, and then I will say mine."
Harding had turned very pale; but he added eagerly--"One more question, sir, and I have done. Was this momentary and imperfect glance which you obtained of the countenance of one of the men in the boat with you, all which led you to believe that I was that person?"
"Although that glance would have been quite sufficient to satisfy me," replied Beauchamp; "what I had learned from that glance was confirmed by the sound of your voice, and by the fact of your having dropped this powder-flask out of your pocket upon the beach, when embarking for France, which powder-flask, you must well remember my giving to you some days before, because it did not measure the right charge for my guns."
"I never saw it before in my life," replied Harding solemnly, and then ceased his interrogatories. The jury had listened to this cross-examination more attentively than to any other part of the evidence; and it was clear that the cool and collected manner in which the prisoner had sifted the testimony of his former master, had produced no small effect on several of the jurors. When Harding ceased, Walter Harrison turned to Beauchamp, and the eyes not only of the whole spectators, but of his fellow-prisoners were fixed upon him.
"Mr. Beauchamp," he said, "I am not going to do what they call cross-examine you; because I am sure you will tell the truth like a gentleman. But once, when we were talking about catching these fellows, you told me as much as that you had overheard what I said on that bad night to old Billy Small--Will you have the goodness to let those gentlemen up there know what it all was?"
Beauchamp detailed the whole; and having suffered a brief cross-examination on the part of the other prisoners, he was allowed to retire. The evidence now given, together with the declaration of Walter Harrison, closed the case for the crown, and the prisoners entered on their defence. Smithson, who knew too well the proceedings of a court of justice to believe that he could mend his condition by his own oratory, declined saying anything, except that he was innocent; to which he added all those ordinary but vehement asseverations, which render the bar of a court of justice an altar to impiety, whence falsehood and blasphemy reek continually up in the sight of Heaven. The woman appeared strongly inclined to speak in her own defence, but her words were drowned in an hysterical burst of sobbing; and Harding, with the young sailor, were left to address the court for themselves.