The face of the provoked dignitary glowed, his eyes flashed, and he looked, in his glittering mitre and splendid vestments, like a being more than human, as, turning from the judge, and raising the staff he held in his right hand, he pointed it towards the assembled crowd, and said,
"I call upon this assembly to witness, that I have, in the name of holy church, demanded the accused—that I have demanded her in the name of the king, by virtue of his royal writ of prohibition, which has been basely purloined—and that, unmindful of that divine power, and despite the king's express command, Judge Skipwith, the servant of the one, and an unworthy son of the other, has contemptuously refused this demand. But," he added fiercely, as he again turned towards Skipwith, and shook his staff at the no less irritated judge, "the royal ermine is disgraced on the shoulders of such as thee—beware that it is not speedily transferred to one more worthy to bear it. I say again, beware!"
The abbot then lowered his staff, the crosierer once more preceded him, and, followed by the monks, he proudly walked forth from the court, the people, as he passed, forming a passage, and humbly bending forward to receive his blessing.
The eyes of the spectators, which, during this strange scene—this trial of strength between the lay and ecclesiastical dignitaries—had alternately wandered to each, were now anxiously directed to Skipwith alone, who hastily concluded his charge, and turned to the jury, as the arbiters of Edith's fate. Calverley, among the rest, cast a look at the jury-box: and Black Jack, turning to his companions, proceeded, in the usual manner, to ask their opinions. Ten, after a minute's consultation, decided that the prisoner was guilty; but the eleventh, the stranger who had endeavoured to screen himself from observation, and whose changing aspect and agitation had betrayed the deep interest he took in the trial, positively refused to return a verdict of guilty. Black Jack cast an intimidating glance on the non-content, but he heeded him not; and as the jury-box, exposed to the eyes of the whole court, was not a place for further debate, the foreman declared, that as one of his brethren would not agree with the rest, they must withdraw.
When the jurors were closeted in their private room, Black Jack asked the galleyman the reasons of his refusal.
"There was no evidence to prove her guilt—I could not, on my conscience, say she was a murderess," returned the stranger, firmly.
"Conscience!" replied the foreman: "who ever heard a galleyman talk of conscience before? By the green wax! you forgot you had a conscience the day I first saw you. You recollect the court of pié-poudré, my conscientious dusty-foot, don't you?"
"Master Oakley, the thing is quite different," replied the galleyman. "To cheat a fool of a piece of coin, is what neither you nor I would think much about; but to rob a poor, helpless old woman of her life—to hang her up at a gallows, and then to bury her like a heathen, where four roads meet—no, no; that must not be."
The foreman's face assumed a deeper hue than usual: he looked fiercely at the galleyman, but there was a determination in the weather-beaten face that made him pause ere he spoke. "Galleyman," he at length said, "you knew the business before you came: if you be so fond of saving old witches' lives, why didn't you say so, that I might not now be in this dilemma?"
"You told me," returned the other, "she was a witch, and that she had killed the child. Now I know she is not a witch; and neither you nor any one here believes a word of the poisoning."