over to you, and were you asked if it was correct?"

"It med be."

"Med be; but wasn't it? You know it was, or, don't you?"

Bumpkin seemed spiked, so silent; seemed on fire, so red.

"Well, we know it was so. Now, my lord, I call your lordship's attention
to this remarkable fact; here in the depositions he calls himself
Pumpkin."

His lordship looks carefully at the depositions and says that certainly
is so.

Mr. Newboy rises and says he understands that it may be a mistake of the
clerk's.

Judge: "How can you say that, Mr. Newboy, when it's in his affidavit?"

(Clerk of Arraigns whispers to his lordship.) "I mean in his
depositions, as I am told they are called in this Court; these are read
over to him by the clerk, and he is asked if they are correct." Shakes
his head.

(So they began to try the prisoner, not so much on the merits of the case
as on the merits of the magistrate's clerk.)

"You certainly said your name was Pumpkin," said the Judge, "and what is
more you swore to it."

("They've got the round square at work," muttered a voice in the
gallery.)

Mr. Nimble: "Now just attend; have you ever gone so far as to say that
this case did not refer to you because your name was not Bumpkin?"

The witness hesitates, then says "he b'leeves not."

"Let those two gentlemen, Mr. Crackcrib and Mr. Centrebit, step forward."

There was a bustle in Court, and then, with grinning faces, up stepped
the two men who had visited Mr. Bumpkin at the "Goose" some days before.

"Have you ever seen these gentlemen before?" asks the learned counsel.

The gentlemen alluded to looked up as if they had practised it together,
and both grinned. How can Mr. Bumpkin's confusion be described? His
under jaw fell, and his head drooped; he was like one caught in a net
looking at the fowler.

The question was repeated, and Mr. Bumpkin wiped his face and returned
his handkerchief into the depths of his hat, into which he would have
liked to plunge also.

Question repeated in a tone that conveyed the impression that witness was
one of the biggest scoundrels in the Heart of Civilization.

"You must really answer," says the Judge.

"They be put on, your lordship."

"No, no," says the counsel, "you mustn't say that, I'll have an answer.
Have you seen them before?"

"Yes," muttered the prosecutor.

"Let them go out of Court. Now then," says the counsel, extending his
right hand and his forefinger and leaning toward