“Is Jonas White (a regular country loafer) in the habit of being in your store?”
“He is—it is a considerable lounge for labouring men.”
“And Stephen Hook?”
“Yes; he is there a good deal of his time.”
“Now, I beg you to remember—did not such a conversation take place, in which you bore a part, between the hours of eleven and twelve in the forenoon; White and Hook being present?”
Hatfield seemed perplexed. He very conscientiously desired to tell the truth, having nothing to gain by an opposite course; but he really had no recollection of any such discussion, as well might be the case; no such conversation ever having taken place. Williams knew the habits of the loafers in question, had selected the time a little at random, and adopted the particularity merely as a means of confounding the juror, of whom he was seriously afraid.
“Such a thing may have happened,” answered Hatfield, after a pause—“I don’t remember.”
“It may have happened—Now, sir, allow me to ask you if, in that conversation, you did not express an opinion that you did not, and could not believe that a lady educated and delicate, like the prisoner at the bar, did, or would, under any circumstances, commit the offence with which Mary Monson is charged?”
Hatfield grew more and more confounded; for Williams’s manner was more and more confident and cool. In this state of feeling he suffered the reply to escape him—
“I may have said as much—it seems quite natural.”