In the end all the accused were honourably acquitted, while McGovoch, who was proved to have been a false witness from the first, was convicted of perjury.

Obviously you think I am not a competent witness, that I know nothing except by hearsay.

But though I was thus shown up for what I was, in a manner most public and undesirable, neither the rulings of the court, nor the attitude of the jury betrayed any loss of confidence in me as a credible witness, and seeing this, the wily lawyer shifted his ground and confined himself to an endeavour to shake me on certain definite and important points.

Bill Dobbs was down there and he told me they let out nothing, except that their principal witness against Fred is that fellow Hill.

"Should you deny the statements quoted above in favor of Midshipman Darrin, and should you further desire to have the matter brought to issue before a duly appointed court of inquiry, before which you would be required to appear as a material witness, this Department will be glad so to be advised.

Although I was absent at the time, and had no concern whatever in the business, and was known to a number of respectable witnesses, I was nevertheless persecuted by this conscientious gentleman, (the Indian not being able to pay for it) and obliged to pay upwards of ten pounds lawful money, with all the costs of court.

But sometimes one found out things from unwilling witnesses if one asked questions.

"The poor old fellow could not talk much, and I soon left him; but what he had told me was sufficient to make it unmistakable that no living person had been within yards of him when he was attacked; and, as I knew, this fact was verified by three capable and responsible witnesses, independent of Bellett himself.

"A faithful witness will not lie: but a false witness breatheth out lies," says Solomon, in marking the one all-dividing line of character; and as to the results of lying he says, "He that breatheth out lies shall not escape," and "he that breatheth out lies shall perish."

There is a swift witness for truth in his bosom, which will respond to truth when it is uttered with calmness and dignity.

The postmaster stated that he had no instructions for a change of address; all the little accessories of Gray Stoddard's life offered themselves, mute, impressive witnesses that he had intended to go on with it in Cottonville.

That such treaties have, indeed, been made, Hanover is a sufficient witness; but however frequently they may occur, they may surely be discovered with very little disadvantage to the nation; they will prove only the weakness of those that made them, who were at one time intimidated by chimerical terrours, and at another, lulled into confidence by airy security.

He sent to New York for sworn testimony, and at the end of six months he made an able report, its allegations sustained by unimpeachable witnesses.

Hill, he declared, was an honest witness.

In a setting less prosaic than Little Arcady, where events might be of a story-fitness, that lover would have been alive by a happy chance, estranged by the misunderstanding but splendidly faithful, and I should have been helper and interested witness to an ideal reconciliation; thereafter to play out my game with a full heart, though with an exterior placidly unconcerned.

So, too, with the immemorial yew-tree: you see its great roots grasping hold of the earth like gigantic claws, clinging so sturdily that no effort of time can wrench them away; and there being life in the old tree, you feel all the more as if a contemporary witness were telling you of the things that have been.

For the sole available witness of that fatal night's tragedy, when one strong man died and another was driven mad, was Thomas Hucks.

Mr. Cohen's ideas will be found to differ exceedingly from that of the (Imperial) merchants, who, in point of fact, are not free men, and cannot be trustworthy witnesses.

Thereupon Gifford gave him a terse account of the events and the chance which had led him into the tower and to be a secret witness of what happened there.

Such a statement ought to be enough, especially as I have repeatedly furnished evidence from reliable eye-witnesses to support every observation that the critics have challenged; but of late a strenuous public attack has been made upon the wolf story in this volume by two men claiming to speak with authority.

The forgotten witness.

Not only would he suppress the elder Cabot, but he covers the well-meaning Hakluyt with opprobrium and undermines his character by insinuations, much as a criminal lawyer might be supposed to do to an adverse witness in a jury trial.

Walker's case was that he had an actual witness, as to the identity of his assailants, in the person of McGovoch, a discharged soldier, who laid information against one civilian, three British officers, and the celebrated French-Canadian leader, La Corne de St Luc.

And when he tells over his bags, looks through the keyhole to see if he have any hidden witness, and asks aloud, Who is there?

If one had taken breath while the other spoke, or rather shouted, I should have suffered less; but they both shouted together, and their struggle to get the better of one another by force of lung, gesticulation, and frenzied rolling of the eyes became a duel, whereby the solitary witness was the only person harmed.