THE TRIAL, AND TALK AT WOODBURN.
The winter is over. There were pleasant cheery times again at Woodburn Grange, at Hillmartin Hall, and at Cotmanhaye Manor. There were splendid dinners at Christmas; and many a one that we know seated at them; and faces as joyous as could be at the after games and dances. There were all the Woodburns, but with some of them also under other names. Mrs. Letty Thorsby, and fair Ann of Cotmanhaye Manor, and their loving husbands, and the worthy Thomas Clavering, as fond of a rubber at whist as ever. Ah, it was a bright, happy, prosperous gathering and intergathering, after dark days and very strange events. But winter is over, and March assizes have arrived.
When Hopcraft was brought into court and placed in the dock, all those who had known him at Woodburn were astonished at the change in his appearance. Instead of that thick, full-fed person, and sun-burnt hue, he was become thin, sickly, and feeble-looking. He gazed about him, on the judge, the barristers, and the crowd, with a frightened stare. The fact was that he had suffered in his health from the constant terror under which he lived so long as Scammel was at large; but since he had been in prison, he had been the victim of another fear, that of the certainty of being hanged. His poor stupid intellect could make no distinction in a general fact. He had always heard murder and hanging linked together in conversation; and he could imagine nothing from his having been implicated in a murder, and present at it, but being hanged for it. Though he contended that he was totally innocent of any intention of assisting Scammel in the dreadful deed, had warned him against perpetrating it, and was greatly surprised at the deed he said, and probably quite truly; yet he had been seen by the Shalcrosses helping to fling the murdered man into the river, and consenting to share the money with the murderer. This he himself had admitted to the magistrates, and this was the vulture that all through the winter was gnawing at his heart. He was in at the murder, and he must hang for it.
A word which the magistrates used had also greatly alarmed him. He had heard one of them say that he was accessory. To his ignorant imagination this presented itself as something direful and ominous. He had soon forgotten, if he ever clearly caught the pronunciation, and it had metamorphosed itself in his mind to “raxery.” He sat in his cell calling himself a “raxery,” and believing that it sealed his fate. He ventured once or twice to ask the turnkey what a raxery meant; and on his shaking his head, and saying he did not know, he was still more convinced that it meant something very like condemned, and the man, therefore, would not tell him.
In this miserable condition poor Hopcraft lost his spirits, but he never lost his appetite. It was the grand feature of his constitution—even overtopping his brute strength; had that failed, he would have collapsed and gone altogether; but his food did him little good; he moped and lived on, often crying like a child through whole nights; and now he came forth with the full conviction that he was only a few days from the gallows.
The counsel for the crown, in stating the case against Hopcraft, gave a clear account of the former trial of Mr. Woodburn for the alleged murder of Mr. Drury, and then of the discovery of the real murderers in the persons of Scammel and the prisoner.
At the mention of the prisoner, Hopcraft cried out in a voice of terror, “No, sir, it wor na me—it wor Scammel!”
The counsel paused a moment, gave a glance at the prisoner,—the jailer who stood by the dock told Hopcraft not to interrupt,—and the barrister went on. He painted in strong colours the desperate character of Scammel; showed the causes, all now fully brought to light on the clearest evidence; Scammel’s spirit of revenge against Mr. Drury; and then described the scene minutely at Wink’s Ferry.
Here the judge observed to the counsel,—“that he had heard a strange story of the murder, after being for two years involved in deepest mystery, and bringing a most respectable and estimable gentleman into jeopardy and trial for his life, being brought to light by a dream. Is that so?” he asked, “or am I dreaming, Mr. Whiteman?”
“It is perfectly true, my lord,” said the barrister. “It was not only indicated, but absolutely described in detail, every circumstance as accurately as if the dreamer had been himself on the spot.”