"Ay—that's just the question. Let them find that out."
"But the grazier saw you?"
"I blackened his e'es."
"You'll be transported to a dead certainty."
"Deevil a fears, if ye're worth the price o' half a mutchkin. I'm saying—get me a Hawick jury, and it's a' richt. They ken me gey and weel thereabouts."
Although I was by no means satisfied in my own mind that an intimate acquaintance with M'Wilkin and his previous pursuits would be a strong recommendation in his favour to any possible assize, I thought it best to follow his instructions, and managed my challenges so well that I secured a majority of Hawickers. The jury being sworn in, the cause proceeded; and certainly, before three witnesses had been examined, it appeared to me beyond all manner of doubt, that, in the language of Tom Campbell, my unfortunate client was
"Doom'd the long coves of Sydney isle to see,"
as a permanent addition to that cultivated and Patagonian population. The grazier stood to his story like a man, and all efforts to break him down by cross-examination were fruitless. There was also another hawbuck who swore to the sheep, and was witness to the assault; so that, in fact, the evidence was legally complete.
Whilst I was occupied in the vain attempt to make Gubbins contradict himself, there had been a slight commotion in the court-room. On looking round afterwards, I was astonished to behold my friend Strachan seated in the Magistrate's box, next to a very pretty and showily-dressed woman, to whom he was paying the most marked and deliberate attention. On the other side of her was an individual in a civic chain, whose fat, pursy, apoplectic appearance, and nose of the colour of an Orleans plum, thoroughly realised my mental picture of the Bailie. His small, blood-shot eyes twinkled with magisterial dignity and importance; and he looked, beside Miss Percy—for I could not doubt that it was she—like a satyr in charge of Florimel.
The last witness for the crown, a very noted police-officer from Glasgow, was then put into the box, to prove a previous conviction against my friend M'Wilkin. This man bore a high reputation in his calling, and was, indeed, esteemed as a sort of Scottish Vidocq, who knew by headmark every filcher of a handkerchief between Caithness and the Border. He met the bold broad stare of the prisoner with a kind of nod, as much as to assure him that his time was very nearly up; and then deliberately proceeded to take a hawk's-eye view of the assembly. I noticed a sort of quiet sneer as he glanced at the Magistrate's box.