erval till they are
ready to resume. The High Bailiff calls 'Brown _v_. Jones,' claim 8_s_.
for goods supplied. No one at first answers, but after several calls a
woman in the body of the Court comes forward. She is partly deaf, and
until nudged by her neighbours did not hear her husband's name. The
Plaintiff is a small village dealer in tobacco, snuff, coarse groceries,
candles, and so on. His wife looks after the little shop and he works with
horse and cart, hauling and doing odd jobs for the farmers. Instead of
attending himself he has sent his wife to conduct the case. The Defendant
is a labourer living in the same village, who, like so many of his class,
has got into debt. He, too, has sent his wife to represent him. This is
the usual course of the cottagers, and of agricultural people who are
better off than cottagers. The men shirk out of difficulties of this kind
by going off in the morning early to their work with the parting remark,
'Aw, you'd better see about it; I don't knaw nothing about such jobs.'

The High Bailiff has no easy task to swear the Plaintiff's representative.
First, she takes the book and kisses it before the formula prescribed has
been repeated. Then she waits till the sentence is finished and lifts the
book with the left hand instead of the right. The Registrar's clerk has to
go across to the box and shout an explanation into her ear. 'Tell the
truth,' says the old lady, with alacrity; 'why, that's what I be come
for.' The Judge asks her what it is she claims, and she replies that that
man, the Registrar's clerk, has got it all written down in his book. She
then turns to the Defendant's wife, who stands in the box opposite, and
shouts to her, 'You knows you ain't paid it.'

It is in vain that the Judge endeavours to question her, in vain that the
High Bailiff tries to calm her, in vain that the clerk lays his hand on
her arm--she is bent on telling the Defendant a bit of her mind. The Court
is perforce compelled to wait till it is over, when the Judge, seeing that
talking is of no avail, goes at once to the root of the matter and asks to
see her books. A dirty account-book, such as may be purchased for
threepence, is handed up to him; the binding is broken, and some of the
leaves are loose. It is neither a day-book, a ledger, nor anything
else--there is no system whatever, and indeed the Plaintiff admits that
she only put down about half of it, and trusted to memory for the rest.
Here is a