The case was adjourned for David to appear, but I never saw David, and I dare say the affair was amicably settled over another quart from M‘Ginnis’s vaults.
Some of the most amusing evidence is given in running-down cases. No Lancashire witness ever admitted that he did not understand a plan, but it is generally waste of time to trouble him with one. Counsel, however, will do it, and I was delighted once when counsel’s own witness marked with a cross the scene of a collision between a tramcar and a milk float in the chancel of the parish church.
They are very dogmatic, too, about the miles per hour a vehicle is travelling, a fact that few can measure accurately. The following dialogue
between counsel and witness shows how worried and confused a witness may get about comparative pace, but his attempted recovery from the dilemma is at least ingenious.
“Where were you, and what were you doing?” asked counsel.
“I was walking along the Eccles Road towards Eccles at about four miles an hour.”
“What pace was the trap going?”
“Very slow indeed,” replied witness. “Say about three miles an hour.”
“Ha!” cried counsel, triumphantly; “but the trap overtook and passed you—you forget that.”
“I do not forget. It’s you that forget,” replied the witness with indignant assurance. “The trap was trotting; I was walking.”