At this moment a sharp-featured woman, wearing a sun-bonnet and with a tangled lock of sandy hair hanging down her back, having literally fought her way to the railing, leaned over it and asked the magistrate in an acidulous whisper:
"Squire, can't I swear to something against him?"
"It would be useless, now, Mrs. Thatcher," replied the Squire, "as he has already been committed. But your evidence might be desired by the Grand Jury. What can you testify to?"
"I can swear," answered the woman, with eager spite, "that he's a hardened villain, and that I believe he killed Jake Van Deust, and that he's been keeping that fool niece of mine out in the woods to the latest and most indecent hours of the night."
"Madam," said the Squire, with mingled dignity and contempt, "you will excuse my saying that you are simply disgusting! Go away!"
XIX.
THE MAD AVENGER.
Nobody could devote himself with greater assiduity to an almost hopeless task than Lem Pawlett did to his pursuit of the unknown lawyer. The weather was exceedingly hot in the city, and he, accustomed to breathing the pure fresh breezes of the sea-shore, felt it terribly oppressive. The pavements were very hard to his feet, used to the soft earth and sand of the country, and he was actually lame most of the time. The interminable streets and the multitude of people confused him and gave him a horrible sense of isolation among them all. Then he very much missed little Ruth's affectionate despotism, and her practical good sense and encouragement, for he had so many disappointments and discouragements to encounter that he was fairly heart-sick almost all the while. Still the good fellow did not give up his chase. He had come to town for a purpose, he said to himself, and he would succeed in it or die trying. Day after day he haunted the courts and the streets where there were most lawyer's offices, and it was not long before he became actually a terror to all the little elderly gentlemen who practised law in New York—and there were a great many of them, as there are even yet. Seeing one who, it seemed to him, might come within the somewhat wide specifications he alone had for his guidance, of being small and past middle age, it was his habit to buttonhole the suspected person and put to him directly the question:
"Do you know the Van Deusts of Easthampton?"
They all said "No." A very few of them, at first, had curiosity enough to add "why?" But upon his commencing his story which from his manner promised to be long, they would always exclaim, "Ah! One moment—excuse me. I see a man—" and would dart away. Generally they did not even ask "why?" but darted away about their own business all the same.
His frequent repetitions of the same question were overheard by other members of the bar than those to whom it was addressed, and it was observed that the interrogation was always directed to little, elderly gentlemen. So very speedily it became a stock-joke among the profession for waggish counsellors to ask of his selected class of victims, at the most inopportune times and unexpected places, "Do you know the Van Deusts of Easthampton?" until they were almost maddened by the iteration.