"Well, what I say is just this. I wouldn't be locked up alone with a strange woman in a railway carriage all the way from Brighton to London, not for--not for any amount of money."
"You are flattering."
"I don't mean nothing--not at all. Only, in this case, how are we to say what happened? He seems to be a decent kind of chap. She might have been nasty, there might have been a rumpus, he might have tried to get away from her, she might have fallen out upon the line. How is any one to tell?"
My friend, the landlord, in spite of his somewhat unpromising appearance, seemed to be one of the few sensible persons I had recently encountered. I pressed him to take another glass of wine. He yielded to the pressure.
"Don't you think they'll find him guilty, then?"
"Oh, they'll find him guilty, safe enough, and I daresay they'll hang him, too. That's just the best of it. When a man gets mixed up with a woman in a thing like this they're sure to think the worse of him. But it doesn't follow that he did it, any the more for that. As for that chap Taunton, I'd hang him!"
It seemed that my friend the gentleman had good cause to congratulate himself on the possession of such a relative. He seemed to be held in general esteem.
When the court reopened the next day I changed my seat. I had taken careful stock of the scene of action the day before. The result had been that I came to one or two conclusions. I perceived, for one thing, that one might very easily sit upon the bench and yet preserve one's anonymity. If I wore a cloak, kept my veil down, sat on the back row, and kept myself in the shade, I need fear no recognition from Tommy.
I quite hungered for a sight of the prisoner. I had not dared to turn and look at him from where I sat the day before. The action might not improbably have attracted his attention.
Besides, I wanted to have a good view of what might, not improperly, be described as the closing tableau.