"I am perfectly unhurt."
Upon this such a cheer arose in the court, that the judge saw that it was perfectly hopeless to attempt to stop it by any ordinary means, and he only held up his hand deprecatingly. The cheer was thrice repeated, and then Sir Richard dismounted from the table, and a death-like stillness ensued in the court as the judge spoke.
"How was it possible," he said, "that the prisoner at the bar could be furnished with such a weapon at a time like this?"
The Governor of Newgate felt that this question was addressed to him, and he tremblingly spoke, saying—
"My lord, I have not the most distant idea upon the subject. He was searched this morning carefully before leaving his cell. It is beyond my comprehension."
"My lord," said a counsel at the table, rising, "there was a very similar case about five years since, when a notorious criminal attacked a witness for the prosecution with a fork, and it appeared afterwards that as he was brought through some of the day-rooms of Newgate to the bar, he had hastily snatched it up from a table that he passed without the officers noticing him."
"This is very likely a similar case," said the judge.
"It may be so my lord," said the Governor.
Todd yelled with rage, when he found that Sir Richard Blunt had escaped his malice. If he could but have taken his life or inflicted upon him some very serious injury, he would have been satisfied almost to have gone to death; but to fail was almost enough to drive him really mad.
"Curses on ye all!" he cried; and then he burst into a torrent of such frightful invectives, that everybody shrunk aghast from it, and it is quite impossible that we should transfer it to our pages. How long he would have proceeded in such a storm, there is no knowing, had not the officers rushed upon him, and by main force dragged him from the dock and the court into the dark passages leading to Newgate.