“An’ hoo cam’ ye on?” inquired the friend.
“I wan.”
“Ye wan!” exclaimed the surprised interrogator, who knew that the debt was a just enough one. “Hoo did ye manage to win?”
“Daugon’d!” exclaimed the erewhile defendant, “I couldna but win; the thing was left to my ain oath.”
Swearers, of course, who view the oath as a thing of expediency, as evidently that man did, come in handy about Courts of Law, and not very long since, in the same Sheriff Court, a batch of witnesses “swore” a young man so clearly out of a charge of assault that a party in Court, who was subsequently to be called on a similar charge, was heard whispering to a friend—“Lord, Tam, I wad gie a pound for half an oor o’ thae witnesses.”
Witnesses are a widely various lot, and are often the source of much amusement ’tween Bench and Bar. Great tact is required by the lawyer who would get “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” out of some of them; and this sometimes, not because of any desire on the witnesses’ part to prevaricate, but from perfectly innocent causes. Cockburn was exceedingly happy in the management of some of those who hailed from country places, and one case in which Jeffrey and he were engaged as counsel is memorable. A vital question in the cause was the sanity of one of the parties primarily concerned.
“Is the defendant, in your opinion, perfectly sane?” said Jeffrey, interrogating one of the witnesses, a plain, stupid-looking country man.
The witness gazed in bewilderment at the questioner, and gave no answer. Jeffrey repeated the question, altering the words—