“Ay,” replied Jacob; “and I left my mark on you too. There’s a scar on your hand. I haven’t a doubt that’s it.”
“Can you prove it?” asked the other, triumphantly. “A scar, indeed! Do you think scars are such uncommon things with men as works hard at the diggings, that you can swear to one scar? A precious likely story!”
“Ah, but I saw you myself.”
“When?”
“At two of the preachings.”
“Preachings! and what then? I didn’t try and murder you at the preachings, did I? But are you sure it was me, after all, as you saw at the preachings?”
“Quite.”
“How was I dressed? Was the person you took for me just the same as me? Had he the same coloured hair—smooth face, like me?”
“I’ll tell you plain truth,” said Jacob, warmly; “it were you. I’m as sure as I’m here it were you; but you’d blacked your sandy hair, and growed a beard on your lip.”
“Well, I never!” cried the other, in a heat of virtuous indignation. “Here’s a man as wants to make out I tried to murder him; but when I asks him to prove it, all he says is, he couldn’t see me do it, that he heard my voice, that I’ve got a scar on my hand, that he saw me twice at some preachings, but it wasn’t me neither; it wasn’t my hair, it wasn’t my beard, and yet he’s sure it was me. Here’s pretty sort of evidence to swear away a man’s life on. Why, I wonder, young man, you ain’t ashamed to look me in the face after such a string of tergiversations.”