ed on the informer, and his pen ready to reduce him to more writing.
Lightwood also smoked, with his eyes negligently turned on the informer.

'Now let me be took down again,' said Riderhood, when he had turned the
drowned cap over and under, and had brushed it the wrong way (if it had
a right way) with his sleeve. 'I give information that the man that done
the Harmon Murder is Gaffer Hexam, the man that found the body. The hand
of Jesse Hexam, commonly called Gaffer on the river and along shore, is
the hand that done that deed. His hand and no other.'

The two friends glanced at one another with more serious faces than they
had shown yet.

'Tell us on what grounds you make this accusation,' said Mortimer
Lightwood.

'On the grounds,' answered Riderhood, wiping his face with his sleeve,
'that I was Gaffer's pardner, and suspected of him many a long day and
many a dark night. On the grounds that I knowed his ways. On the grounds
that I broke the pardnership because I see the danger; which I warn you
his daughter may tell you another story about that, for anythink I can
say, but you know what it'll be worth, for she'd tell you lies, the
world round and the heavens broad, to save her father. On the grounds
that it's well understood along the cause'ays and the stairs that he
done it. On the grounds that he's fell off from, because he done it. On
the grounds that I will swear he done it. On the grounds that you may
take me where you will, and get me sworn to it. I don't want to back out
of the consequences. I have made up MY mind. Take me anywheres.'

'All this is nothing,' said Lightwood.

'Nothing?' repeated Riderhood, indignantly and amazedly.

'Merely nothing. It goes to no more than that you suspect this man of
the crime. You may do so with some reason, or you may do so with no
reason, but he cannot be convicted on your suspicion.'

'Haven't I said--I appeal to the T'other Governor as my witness--haven't
I said from the first minute that I opened my mouth in this here
world-without-end-everlasting chair' (he evidently used that form of
words as next in force to an affidavit), 'that I was willing to swear
that he done it? Haven't I said, Take me and get me sworn to it? Don't I
say so now? You won't deny it, Lawyer Lightwood?'

'Surely not; but you only offer to swear to your suspicion, and I tell
you it is not enough to swear to your suspicion.'

'Not enough, ain't it, Lawyer Lightwood?' he cautiously demanded.