“Not improper at all, sir,” replied the witness. “A medical man would prescribe them for certain cases. Not for children: to an infant one would be what it has been here—destruction.”
I felt a nudge at my elbow, and turned to see the Squire’s hot face close to mine.
“Johnny, don’t you ever stand up for that Crew again. He ought to be hanged.”
But the coroner, after a bit, seemed puzzled; or rather, doubtful. Led to be so, perhaps, by a question put by one of the jury. It was Perkins the butcher.
“If these pills were furnished by Abel Crew for Hester Reed, a growed woman, and she went and gave one of her own accord to the two babies, ought Crew to be held responsible for that?”
Upon which there ensued some cavilling. Some of the jury holding that he was not responsible; others that he was. The coroner reminded them of what Hester Reed had stated in her evidence—that she had asked Crew’s opinion about the suitability of the pills for children, and he had told her they were suitable.
Hester Reed was called. As the throng parted to make way for her to advance, I saw Ann Dovey seated at the back of the room, looking more dead than alive. Dovey stood by her, having made himself spruce for the occasion. Ann would have gone off a mile in some opposite direction, but old Jones’s orders to all the witnesses of the former day, to appear again, had been peremptory. They had been wanted before, he told them, and might be wanted again.
“You need not look such a scarecrow with fright,” I whispered in Ann Dovey’s ear, making my way to her side to reassure her, the woman was so evidently miserable. “It was the pills that did the mischief, after all—didn’t you hear? Nothing need come out about your pocket and the powder.”
“Master Johnny, I’m just about skeered out o’ my life, I am. Fit to go and drown myself.”