"Ye are the first, my friends," said Turner, cordially grasping the extended hand of Leicester, "and, by St. Nicholas! it is now getting fast on for ten o'clock."
<024>
ONE:Heads were shaken in triumphant commiseration, and the stones which according to all decent tradition should have been flung at Rose, hurtled round her husband instead.
"Thanks, but I d?an't t?ake teaI've never held wud it."He stood swaying before her on his heels, his hands in his trouser-pockets, his head a little on one side. Caro did not speakshe could not.That same day, Calverley summoned, or rather packed, a jury at which he himself presided; and a verdict of wilful murder was returned against Edith. Apprehensive, however, that the charge of poisoning might not be sustained upon the unsupported testimony of Mary Byles, he easily influenced the credulous jurors to believe that witchcraft had as much to do with the child's death as poison. His usual tact, however, had forsaken him on this occasion, and it was not until the verdict was announced and recorded, that the unwelcome conviction flashed across his mind, that the temporal courts could exercise no jurisdiction over the crime of witchcraft. It was now too late to alter the language of the inquisition. It had gone forth to hundreds who awaited its promulgation with intense anxiety; and the language of the verdict that "Edith Holgrave delivered to Mary Byles, a certain charmed or poisonous drug, for the purpose of destroying Roland De Boteler, and which said drug was administered to, and caused the death of, the said Roland," was, in a few hours, familiar to the whole town and neighbourhood."Why, as for kings," said Turner, "I am not sure; Richard is but a boy yet, and his father was a""Wot about?""I d?an't never think of them that way. One's no good to me wudout t'other."
