Part 11 (1/2)

”As man to man, sir, let me beseech you to take pity on the dreadful situation we are in.”

”To what situation do you allude, sir?”

”I am alluding, sir, to the dreadful pain which I am enduring in my left ear; you can have no conception of its severity. Besides which I have a sadly weakly const.i.tution generally--as is well known to more than one gentleman who is now present. I have suffered for the last twenty years from chronic lumbago, together with a functional derangement of the liver, which, directly any irregularity occurs in my hours or habits, invariably reduces me to a state of collapse. I a.s.sure you that if this enforced confinement and prolonged abstention from my natural food endures much longer, in my present state of health the consequences may be highly serious.”

”I don't follow your reasoning, sir. Because you are physically unfitted to serve upon a jury, and culpably omitted to inform the court of the fact, you wish me not to do my duty, you having already failed to do yours?”

”I wish you,” sighed Mr. Tyler, ”to be humane.”

”This is the first jury ever I was on,” groaned Mr. Parkes, shaking his ancient head as if it had been hung on wires, ”and I'll take care that it's the last. Such things didn't ought to be--not when a man's got to my years, they didn't. Who's young Jim Bailey, I'd like to know, that we should go losing our dinners acause of him? Hit him over the head and ha' done with it--that's what I say.”

”You must excuse me, Captain Rudd,” said Mr. Timmins, ”but why can't you strain a point as well as the rest of us? Why shouldn't we, as a body of practical men, take a merciful view of the position and give the boy another chance? He is only a boy after all.”

”We are not automata though we are jurymen, and surely we may, without shame, allow ourselves to be actuated by the dictates of our common humanity.”

Thus Mr. Plummer. Mr. Slater agreed with him in a fas.h.i.+on of his own.

”Let the boy go and have done with it--I daresay we can trust Jacob to give him a good sound towelling.”

”He's had that already.”

There was a grimness in Mr. Longsett's tone which caused more than one of his hearers to smile.

”I'll be bound his mother's crying her eyes out for him at home.”

This was Tom Elliott. Mr. Plummer joined his hands as if in supplication.

”Poor woman!” he murmured.

”It comes hard upon the mothers,” said Mr. Hisgard.

”And Jim Bailey's mother is as honest and hard-working a woman as ever lived--that I know as a fact. And she's seen a lot of trouble!”

As he made this announcement Mr. Timmins shuffled his pack of cards, as if the action relieved his mind. For some moments everyone was still. Suddenly Mr. Tyler, who had been looking a picture of misery, broke into audible lamentations.

”Oh dear! oh dear! I'm very ill! Won't anyone take pity on a man in agony?”

So intense was his sympathy with his own affairs that the tears trickled down his cheeks. Mr. Timmins endeavoured to encourage him.

”Come, Mr. Tyler, come! Bear up! It'll soon be over now!”

”If anything serious comes of the cruel suffering which is being inflicted on me I shall look to you gentlemen for compensation. I'm a poor man; it's always a hard struggle, with my poor health, to make two ends meet. I can't afford to pay doctors' bills which have been incurred by the actions of others!”

”That's pleasant hearing--what do you think, Mr. Hisgard?--if we've got to contribute to this gentleman's doctors' bills! Come, Mr. Tyler, don't talk like that, or soon we shall all of us be ill. I know I shall!”

There was a further pause. Then Mr. Moss delivered himself.