Cheap Jack Zita

by S. Baring-Gould

'No. I heard he had regaled them.'

'That is no evidence.' Then the chairman turned to Mark Runham and said, 'Has the accused any questions he would like to put to witness?'

'Yes,' said Mark. 'I inquire of him whether I did not protest that I came merely as a neighbour and a friend.'

'A friend?' exclaimed Drownlands. 'No Runham can be a friend to me, nor I a friend to him.'

'That is no answer to his question,' said the chairman.

'He said something of the sort,' Drownlands admitted.

'Did I not say,' pursued Mark, 'that Gaultrip had refused at the outset to pay blackmail, and that in the end, when his rick was blazing, he gave way, and that I had run on ahead to advise you as a neighbour not to provoke to outrage an irritated and unreasonable rabble?'

'Yes, you said that; but how was I to know you were not acting for the rioters? You gave them cake.'

'Come,' said the magistrate occupying the chair, 'we will hear now what that lively young woman has to say. She clearly is bursting with desire to tell us all she knows. Put her in the witness-box.'

As Drownlands left the place he had occupied, Zita stepped into his room at the instigation of the constable. She looked up at the Bench with a cheery countenance, and then round at the public that crammed every available space.