“The other man looked frightened, and when Bame said ‘I thought you were dead,’ he staggered as though struck. Then they talked.”
“Well, what did they say?”
“I can’t remember it all. It was about some false charges. The prisoner said that his name was Richard Bame, and he called the other by name, but I have forgotten it. He was a handsome man in black cloak, and he seemed much distressed. The lights showed his face well, which was smooth, and he had a white feather in his cap. I think the prisoner would have killed—”
“Never mind what you thought,” interposed Eliot.
“You were interrupted,” said the judge, in the pause which followed, “because you are not allowed to express your opinions. State only what you did, what others did and what was said.”
“I was so afraid that the prisoner would kill the other man,” continued the witness, “that I crept away out of the church. I wanted to find a watchman, but I saw no lights. I ran around the corner of the church, and at the mouth of the alley bumped into a man. A score of other men were with him and these were the thieves, but I didn’t know it. I said, ‘A man is about to be killed in this church.’ And the one who held my arm asked, ‘How do you know’? And I said, ‘I have just come out.’ Then said he, ‘Are the doors open?’ ‘Yes,’ I answered; and at that he whispered to those nearest, ‘Come on. The church is open. We can sack it.’ At that they hurried me along, and we passed into the church with much noise. The man to whom I had spoken still held my arm and was at the head. I looked for the lights of the chantry, but saw none, and someone said, ‘The boy has lied. No one is here,’ and they let go my arm. And when they had lighted torches, I ran toward the chantry. The doors were closed and no lights shone.”
“Is that all?” asked the judge, and as the witness made no answer, he continued: “This testimony corroborates the testimony of the officers that the prisoner came out of the church despite his statements to them to the contrary, but it appears that he was in no way connected with the burglary. He was not an associate of the two robbers tried yesterday, nor of the boy.”
At this the boy suddenly inquired: “Have Pento and Badly been tried?”
“Yes, and found guilty. What of it?”
The boy collected his faculties. To secure his own liberty, the prisoner must be convicted. So far he had stuck to the truth, but he was ready to add fiction. The turnkey of his ward in Newgate had intimated that if he turned state’s evidence he might possibly go free. So it seemed that the two other robbers had been tried and found guilty without his appearance as a witness. This he had not suspected. So there would be no chance for him to tell how he had seen Pento light the first torch, and Badly tugging and wrenching at the ornaments about the altar. They were already under sentence of death. If he said nothing more about the man at the bar, the latter would be acquitted, and the Tyburn rope would be around his own neck. Had he been of the order of dangerous reasoners, who consider no act wrong so long as the prosperity of the State is secured or advanced by it, he might have felt that the perjured testimony he was about to give was justifiable because the prisoner should be hung on the general principles spoken of by his attorney. But this was not his incentive. If he were to say anything, he must say it quickly, for all eyes were upon him, and again no whispers were heard in the great hall. His life experience, in which he had had to use falsehood, bravado and cunning against human foes and starvation, stood him in good stead. He spoke, but his voice was scarcely above a whisper, and he kept looking at his manacles: