“Well, I pulled ’im out, and saw a nasty cut in ’is throat. So I drove on to North Walsham and saw Mr. Bennet.”
“Anything else?”
“No, sir, nawthin’ else.”
“Any juryman wish to ask a question?” inquired the coroner, looking across at the twelve local taxpayers.
The foreman, a stout farmer, said:
“I’d like, sir, to ask the witness if the gentleman was dead when he pulled him out of the ditch.”
“Dead as mutton,” was the witness’s prompt reply.
“You think he was dead? He may not have been,” the coroner remarked.
“Well, I put my ’and on ’is ’eart an’ it didn’t beat, sir.”
“Very well,” said the official holding the inquiry, “that will do.”