“No, your Honour, the State will accept the juror; I now see that my information has been wrong.”
“We challenge for the defence,” said Timms, deciding on the instant, on the ground that if Williams was so ready to change his course of proceeding, there must be a good reason for it. “Stand aside, juror.”
“Peter Bailey,” called the clerk.
No objection being made, Peter Bailey took his seat. The two next jurors were also received unquestioned; and it only remained to draw the twelfth man. This was so much better luck than commonly happens in capital cases, that everybody seemed more and more pleased, as if all were anxious to come to the testimony. The judge evidently felicitated himself, rubbing his hands with very great satisfaction. The bar, generally, entered into his feelings; for it helped along its business.
“On the whole,” observed one of the lawyers who was in extensive practice, speaking to another at his side, “I would as soon try one of these murder-cases as to go through with a good water-cause.”
“Oh! they are excruciating! Get into a good water-cause, with about thirty witnesses on a side, and you are in for a week. I was three days at one, only last circuit.”
“Are there many witnesses in this case?”
“About forty, I hear,” glancing towards the benches where most of the females sat. “They tell me there will be a very formidable array as to character. Ladies from York by the dozen!”
“They will be wanted, if all they say is true.”
“If all you hear is true, we have reached a new epoch in the history of mankind. I have never seen the day when half of that I hear is more than half true. I set the rest down as ‘leather and prunella.’”