"How long did you live there?"
"Only three weeks. The plumbing was bad."
Lew kept on in this line of questioning for several minutes more, by which time Smollett had testified that he had moved thirteen times during the past three years, in each instance telling the address of the house he had lived in and the length of time he had lived there.
"This is astonishing," said Lew. "You certainly possess a remarkable memory, Mr. Smollett."
"I think I have got a good memory," complacently said the witness.
"There is no question about that," said Lew. "I very much doubt if any gentleman on the jury could have remembered so much and so positively as you have done, and yet you have apparently forgotten that you worked for the Continental Iron Works for one entire week since the date of your accident!"
A murmur of surprise went around the crowded courtroom. The witness grew pale and then flushed fiery red, and shifted uneasily in his seat, while the members of the jury glanced at each other in a significant manner.
Smollett's lawyer half arose as though to make some objection, and then seemed to realize the hopeless nature of the situation and sat down again with a scowl on his face.
The witness was trembling, and Lew went at him savagely.
"I have here a sworn copy of the time-book of the Continental Iron Works, in which your name appears as having worked from the seventh to the thirteenth of June in the year you were injured," he said, fixing the unhappy witness with his piercing eyes. "Do you deny that you did that work?"