Mr. White Lush: Did you flop on your head or your heels?

[45]

[45]

Witness: I couldn’t take it upon myself to say, sir.

Mr. White Lush: And this is all you know of the murder?

Witness: If you was to keep me ’ere for a month, sir, you couldn’t get nothink else out of me.

Mr. White Lush: I have done with you.

Mr. Goldberry: I shall not detain you long, Mrs. Preedy. Look attentively at the prisoner. Do you know him?

Witness: No, sir.

Mr. Goldberry: Have you ever seen him in Great Porter Square?

Witness: Neither there or nowheres else. This is the first time I ever set eyes on ’im.

Mr. Goldberry: You swear that, positively.

Witness: If it were the last word I ever spoke, it’s the truth.

Mr. Goldberry: That will do.

Mrs. Preedy left the witness box in a state of great agitation, amid the tittering of the spectators.

Mr. Goldberry, addressing the Bench, said[46] that he saw in the Court three of the constables who had been instrumental in arresting the prisoner, one being the officer who had first observed the prisoner in Great Porter Square. It was well known that the prisoner had declined to put a single question to one of the witnesses called on behalf of the Treasury. He asked to be allowed to exercise the privilege of cross-examining these constables, and he promised to occupy the court but a very short time.

[46]

No objection being raised, Police-constable Richards entered the witness box.

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