“The prisoner at the bar, it is admitted by himself in the depositions taken by the magistrates, and as was and will be also proved by two eye-witnesses, was in company with the chief criminal, Scammel. It cannot be proved that he assisted in the murder itself, but it can that he helped to throw the murdered man into the river, and shared the money of which the deceased gentleman was plundered; and that the prisoner never, till arrested for the crime, took any pains to make the fact known to any one.
“I don’t see,” said the judge, “how there could be two eye-witnesses, unless they are partners in the crime who have turned king’s evidence, and yet the complete concealment of the true perpetrators of the crime have brought an innocent person into question for it.”
“Your lordship will soon see the reason when the witnesses are called.”
“Very well; go on,” said the judge.
The depositions were read, and the evidence was then gone through; and as the counsel called in the two Shalcrosses, he said, “Now, my lord, you will see the two eye-witnesses.”
The evidence was that with which our readers are already acquainted. The jury found Hopcraft guilty on the second count—that of being accessory to the fact; and on the third—that of concealment; and Hopcraft was very agreeably surprised to find himself not condemned to be hanged, but only transported to Botany Bay for the term of fourteen years.
When the Shalcrosses were brought up, it was at first separately, and then together; and the judge, who had evidently read the depositions of Jenny with much interest, put several questions to her himself, and both he and the court at large showed themselves struck by the clearness and shrewdness of her answers. In summing up, his lordship said, he could not see how these old people could have acted differently from what they had done. They had evidently been casual witnesses of the murder, and had from that very moment, and ever since, been the real prisoners of the murderer—under daily terror of their own lives. The instant that they found themselves freed from his surveillance, they had hastened to disclose their knowledge of the crime. He could not himself connect them in any manner with the murder. The jury, without withdrawing from the box, pronounced them “Not Guilty,” and they were immediately discharged, to wander again at will amongst the country villages, and dream out their few remaining days on sunny commons and by running brooks. Many a shilling was thrust into their hands as they passed through the crowd, and issued once more into the open air and unimpeded streets.
A subscription was raised, to send Hopcraft’s wife and children out with him, amongst our friends at Woodburn, Hillmartin, Cotmanhaye, &c., and another of Mr. Woodburn’s labourers was put into his cottage.
The magistrates of the county, at their next sitting after the assizes, sent for Tom Boddily, and informed him that the reward of one hundred pounds offered by Government for the apprehension of the murderer, Scammel, was awarded to him, and they had received a Treasury order to pay it to him. The friends of the murdered gentleman would, no doubt, now pay over to him the two hundred pounds which they had offered; and the Chairman, holding out a cheque on the bank for the one hundred, said that he had well earned the whole amount, and had discharged the duty of tracing out and securing that notorious criminal in a very praiseworthy manner. He advised Tom to allow his employers to invest the sum for him, and not let it make him unsteady, by leading him to the public-house.
“Sir,” said Tom, respectfully, “I will undertake that the money shall do me no harm, because I would not touch it if it were a thousand times the sum. Gentlemen,” he said, “I have done my duty, I hope, in catching that murdering villain, and I am glad of it; but I never will, here or anywhere else, touch blood-money.”