“Thank you, sir—I am thankful for even the smallest hints on manners. It’s a pity that so handsome and so agreeable a young lady should be hanged, Mr. Dunscomb!”
“Timms, you are as shrewd a fellow, in your own way, as I know. Your law does not amount to any great matter, nor do you take hold of the strong points of a case very often; but you perform wonders with the weaker. In the way of an opinion on facts, I know few men more to be relied on. Tell me, then, frankly, what do you think of the guilt or innocence of Mary Monson?”
Timms screwed up his mouth, passed a hand over his brow, and did not answer for near a minute.
“Perhaps it is right, after all, that we should understand each other on this subject,” he then said. “We are associated as counsel, and I feel it a great honour to be so associated, ’Squire Dunscomb, I give you my word; and it is proper that we should be as free with each other as brothers. In the first place, then, I never saw such a client before, as this same lady—for lady I suppose we must call her until she is convicted——”
“Convicted!—You cannot think there is much danger of that, Timms?”
“We never know, sir; we never know. I have lost cases of which I was sure, and gained them of which I had no hopes—cases which I certainly ought not to have gained—ag’in all law and the facts.”
“Ay, that came of the horse-shed, and the sleeping of two in a bed.”
“Perhaps it did, ’Squire,” returned Timms, laughing very freely, though without making any noise; “perhaps it did. When the small-pox is about, there is no telling who may take it. As for this case, ’Squire Dunscomb, it is my opinion we shall have to run for disagreements. If we can get the juries to disagree once or twice, and can get a change of venue, with a couple of charges, the deuce is in it if a man of your experience don’t corner them so tightly, they’ll give the matter up, rather than have any more trouble about it. After all, the state can’t gain much by hanging a young woman that nobody knows, even if she be a little aristocratical. We must get her to change her dress altogether, and some of her ways too; which, in her circumstances, I call downright hanging ways; and the sooner she is rid of them, the better.”
“I see that you do not think us very strong on the merits, Timms, which is as much as admitting the guilt of our client. I was a good deal inclined to suspect the worst myself; but two or three more interviews, and what my nephew Jack Wilmeter tells me, have produced a change. I am now strongly inclined to believe her innocent. She has some great and secret cause of apprehension, I will allow; but I do not think these unfortunate Goodwins have anything to do with it.”
“Waal, one never knows. The verdict, if ‘not guilty,’ will be just as good as if she was as innocent as a child a year old. I see how the work is to be done. All the law, and the summing up, will fall to your share; while the outdoor work will be mine. We may carry her through—though I’m of opinion that, if we do, it will be more by means of bottom than by means of foot. There is one thing that is very essential, sir—the money must hold out.”