"No, thank you. But perhaps Mr. Timmins will?"
He passed the packet to Mr. Timmins. That gentleman made a feint of opening it. Mr. Longsett, rising from his chair, reached for his property across the table.
"None of that; give it back to me." Mr. Timmins tossed the packet to the other end of the table.
"Now, Timmins, what do you mean by that? Do you want me to wipe you across the head?"
Mr. Timmins addressed Mr. Grice. "Now, Mr. Foreman, won't you offer the jury a sandwich each? It is about our dinner-time."
Mr. Grice eyed the packet in front of him as if he were more than half disposed to act on the suggestion.
"I really don't think, Mr. Longsett, that you ought to eat sandwiches out of a pure spirit of contradiction."
"Never mind what you think; you give me back my property, or I'll give the whole lot of you in custody." The parcel was restored to him. He brandished it aloft. "There you are, you see, a lot of grown men go and steal another man's property, and you treat it as a joke. A mere lad goes and looks at a truss of mouldy hay, and you want to ruin him for life. And you call that justice! You ain't going to get me to take a hand in no such justice, so I tell you straight!"
"It went a little farther than 'looks,' didn't it, Mr. Longsett? 'Looks' won't carry even mouldy hay three miles across country."
"And 'looks' won't carry my property from where I'm sitting down to where you are! If Jim Bailey's a thief, so's Tom Elliott--there's no getting over that. Why ain't we sitting on him instead of on that there young 'un?"