“Has any such recognition occurred?” demanded Dunscomb, with interest.
“To be frank with you, ’Squire Dunscomb, I sent the money to town at once, and set it afloat in the great current in Wall Street, where it could do neither good nor harm on the trial. It would have been very green in me to pay out the precise coin among the people of Duke’s. No one could say what might have been the consequences.”
“It is not very easy for me to foretell the consequences of the substitutes which, it seems, you did use. A fee to a counsel I can understand; but what the deuce you have done, legally, with a thousand dollars out-of-doors, exceeds my penetration I trust you have not been attempting to purchase jurors, Timms?”
“Not I, sir.[sir.] I know the penalties too well, to venture on such a defence. Besides, it is too soon to attempt that game. Jurors may be bought; sometimes are bought, I have heard say”—here Timms screwed up his face into a most significant mimicry of disapprobation—“but I have done nothing of the sort in the ‘State vs. Mary Monson.’ It is too soon to operate, even should the testimony drive us to that, in the long run.”
“I forbid all illegal measures, Timms. You know my rule of trying causes is never to overstep the limits of the law.”
“Yes, sir; I understand your principle, which will answer, provided both sides stick to it. But, let a man act as close to what is called honesty as he please, what certainty has he that his adversary will observe the same rule? This is the great difficulty I find in getting along in the world, ’Squire; opposition upsets all a man’s best intentions. Now, in politics, sir, there is no man in the country better disposed to uphold respectable candidates and just principles than I am myself; but the other side squeeze us up so tight, that before the election comes off, I’m ready to vote for the devil, rather than get the worst of it.”
“Ay, that’s the wicked man’s excuse all over the world, Timms. In voting for the gentleman you have just mentioned, you will remember you are sustaining the enemy of your race, whatever may be his particular relation to his party. But in this affair at Biberry, you will please to remember it is not an election, nor is the devil a candidate. What success have you had with the testimony?”
“There’s an abstract of it, sir; and a pretty mess it is! So far as I can see, we shall have to rest entirely on the witnesses of the State; for I can get nothing out of the accused.”
“Does she still insist on her silence, in respect of the past?”
“As close as if she had been born dumb. I have told her in the strongest language that her life depends on her appearing before the jury with a plain tale and a good character; but she will help me to neither. I never had such a client before—”