“Unanimously, they tell me, Mr. Dunscomb,” answered Timms. “I understand that only one man hesitated, and he was brought round before they came into court. That piece of money damns our case in old Duke’s.”
“Money saves more cases than it damns, Timms; and no one knows it better than yourself.”
“Very true, sir. Money may defy even the new code. Give me five hundred dollars, and change the proceedings to a civil action, and I’ll carry anything in my own county that you’ll put on the calendar, barring some twenty or thirty jurors I could name. There are about thirty men in the county that I can do nothing with—for that matter, whom I dare not approach.”
“How the deuce is it, Timms, that you manage your causes with so much success? for I remember you have given me a good deal of trouble in suits in which law and fact were both clearly enough on my side.[side.]”
“I suppose those must have been causes in which we ‘horse-shedded’ and ‘pillowed’ a good deal.”
“Horse-shedded and pillowed! Those are legal terms of which I have no knowledge!”
“They are country phrases, sir, and country customs too, for that matter. A man might practise a long life in town, and know nothing about them. The Halls of Justice are not immaculate; but they can tell us nothing of horse-shedding and pillowing. They do business in a way of which we in the country are just as ignorant as you are of our mode.”
“Have the goodness, Timms, just to explain the meaning of your terms, which are quite new to me. I will not swear they are not in the Code of Practice, but they are in neither Blackstone nor Kent.”
“Horse-shedding, ’Squire Dunscomb, explains itself. In the country, most of the jurors, witnesses, &c., have more or less to do with the horse-sheds, if it’s only to see that their beasts are fed. Well, we keep proper talkers there, and it must be a knotty case, indeed, into which an ingenious hand cannot thrust a doubt or an argument. To be frank with you, I’ve known three pretty difficult suits summed up under a horse-shed in one day; and twice as many opened.”
“But how is this done?—do you present your arguments directly, as in court?”