“Have you never heard, while living at Painted Post, that he was suspected of being engaged in the robbery?”
“I do-no. I never take no notice about what people say suspiciously about their neighbours.”
“Really you’re a very singular witness. Let me jog your memory a little. Do you remember having said anything about Harris’s connection with the Tioga sheep-stealing, and the Jenkins’s store robbery, while you were at Gillis’s store one night last April?”
“As fer’s my reck’lection serves, I ha—ant.”
“Were you at Gillis’s store on the night of the 17th of April?”
“I do-no for sartin.”
“Were you in Ridgeway at all on the 17th of April?”
“Yeeas, I was.”
“How do you fix the time? Proceed, and tell the justice, (we shall get at the truth of this story yet,” aside to the plaintiff.) “Come Sir, proceed Sir.”
“Wall, on the mornin’ of the 17th, Dickson says he to me, says he, ‘Seth, go down to Mr. Dill’s, and get the nails clenched in the brown mare’s off-hind foot.’ So I jist put a halter on an’, cantered down to Ridgeway, and stopt tu Gileses’ store, an’ bort some thread an’ needles for Ant Jerusha, an’ Gilleses’ clark ast me ef I wouldn’t like to taste sum new rum he had jest got up from Bellefonte, an’ I said, ‘Yis,’ an’ he poured out abeout have a tumbler, an’ I drinkt it right deown.”