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"Go on, Bill," said Justice Stout.

"Haven't anything more to say, sir -- except this, Dick told me he believed Jims or some of them would get into State's prison yet. What for? I said. For burning barns or something else."

"A c----d lie!" roared a voice from the crowd. It was Richard Bunce.

"Undoubtedly!" said lawyer Tools.

"What is the point, gentlemen?" inquired the justice.

"It is this, may it please the Court," said Mr. Ketchum, "that this witness swears to a conversation with Richard about the 'burning of barns,' evidently thinking of his father's barns, half an hour before the event, or before any body else had apparently thought of such an event 1"

"The witness ought not to be interrupted," said the justice, "though he should remember to speak only the truth and what he knows."

Bill said he didn't pretend to know anything. He only said just what he saw "with his natural eyes and heard with his natural ears." So he was dismissed.

Now it came for Jims to be examined. The boy looked very much abashed and shy when brought forward -- you would say at once guilty -- and how could he be otherwise than guilty? Did not all the evidence lean against him? Was he not friendless too, and suspected of every crime committed in the neighborhood?

But Jims' appearance was rather the natural awkwardness of one brought up in an inferior condition, who had all his life been abused and kept in the dust; it was more this than the effect of guilt. He was oppressed by the scrowling look of the people, and by the consciousness of their verdict already made up against him, as well as by the circumstances all harmonizing to convict him, but not by any sense of his criminality in the case -- so he showed as good a face as he, poor boy, felt able to, and several times made such replies to the lawyer's interrogatories as to rather interest the spectators in his favor.

He admitted the flogging and the cause of it. His evil temper; his brush with Mr. Shire, but told them Mr. Shire inflamed him by calling Mr. Boyce names, and then by shaking him and threatening to flog him again. The people all looked at Shire rather searchingly and inquiringly.

"Well, it was something so, by thunder, boy," said Shire, in the crowd.

"It was, eh?" said Lawyer Tools, jocosely.

Jims told his story till he got to the corner of the barnyard wall. Here the lawyers and the justice, and all the people were very intent to get hold of every word he spoke, and of every idea and shade of thought the poor boy had.

"You say," said Tools, "you went acrost the lot in the snow because it was nearer?"

"Yes, sir."

"How much nearer was it?"

"I don't know, some considerable."

"You went to the corner of the wall?"'

"Yes, I went there."

"Did you go round the corner into the path?"

"No, I didn't."

"Did you get over the wall, my boy; you needn't be afraid to say so if you did. Did you get over the wall into the yard?" blandly inquired Tools.

"No, I didn't."

"You didn't even climb the wall to see the cattle?"

"No, not a bit.'

"Well, my boy, you say you stopped at the corner of the wall a little time -- say how long."

"A minute."

"Was it not fifteen minutes?"

"'Fifteen minutes!' Oh, dear, no! I was home talking with old Dan in less than that."

"Perhaps you went acrost the fields to meet Dan?"

"No, I didn't; met him by accident. It was dark."

"Well, now, you neither went round the corner of the wall, nor got up on to it, nor over it, nor round the barn -- how then did you get into the yard "

"I didn't get there, I tell you, at all!" said the lad, with the quickness of lightning.

"You see," said Ketchum, "this game won't do, Tools; he's a straight out-and-outer. You can't fog him, nor cross him, nor trip him."

"Well," said Tools, "he must tell the truth."

"By all means!" said the justice.

"Any thing further to ask?" inquired Ketchum.

"Yes -- stay a moment. Haddock! call Mr. Haddock."

Mr. Haddock came forward.

"I think you said, Mr. Haddock, that this boy left your house a little past nine?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did he appear in a hurry to go?"

"Nothing unusually so."

"Did he seem morose, look dog-eared, and bent on mischief?"

"He seemed perfectly mild and harmless."

Mr. Ketchum inquired if he thought "it very likely he would go away and set a barn on fire in five minutes from that time."

Mr. Haddock regarded it morally impossible.

Lawyer Tools didn't "care a pin" what Haddock thought, or Ketchum, or any body else. He only wanted facts, and he'd "have them if they were not covered up and befogged by 'moral impossibilities,' till it was legally impossible to tell black from white!" Tools had a way of getting off things that pleased the crowd, who always pricked up their ears, opened their eyes, and gaped with their mouths till he finished off, and then took a long breath as a relief.

"Well, boy," said Tools, "you say you didn't go round the corner of that wall into the path. Now I want to know one thing. Why did you stop there 'a minute,' as you say, and then run off in another direction in the snow, when there was a good path right home from the bars! Now answer that!"