rogues?'

'An alibi, your Lordship.'

'Ha! The common plea of every scoundrel. Have they witnesses?'

'We have here a list of forty witnesses, your Lordship. They are waiting
below, many of them having come great distances, and with much toil and
trouble.'

'Who are they? What are they?' cried Jeffreys.

'They are country folk, your Lordship. Cottagers and farmers, the
neighbours of these poor men, who knew them well, and can speak as to
their doings.'

'Cottagers and farmers!' the Judge shouted. 'Why, then, they are drawn
from the very class from which these men come. Would you have us believe
the oath of those who are themselves Whigs, Presbyterians, Somersetshire
ranters, the pothouse companions of the men whom we are trying? I
warrant they have arranged it all snugly over their beer--snugly,
snugly, the rogues!'

'Will you not hear the witnesses, your Lordship?' cried our counsel,
shamed into some little sense of manhood by this outrage.

'Not a word from them, sirrah,' said Jeffreys. 'It is a question whether
my duty towards my kind master the King--write down "kind master,"
clerk--doth not warrant me in placing all your witnesses in the dock as
the aiders and abettors of treason.'

'If it please your Lordship,' cried one of the prisoners, 'I have for
witnesses Mr. Johnson, of Nether Stowey, who is a good Tory, and also
Mr. Shepperton, the clergyman.'

'The more shame to them to appear in such a cause,' replied Jeffreys.
'What are we to say, gentlemen of the jury, when we see county gentry
and the clergy of the Established Church supporting treason and
rebellion in this fashion? Surely the last days are at hand! You are a
most malignant and dangerous Whig to have so far drawn them from their
duty.'

'But hear me, my Lord!' cried one of the prisoners.

'Hear you, you bellowing calf!' shouted the Judge. 'We can hear naught
else. Do you think that you are back in your conventicle, that you
should dare to raise your voice in such a fashion? Hear you, quotha! We
shall hear you at the end of a rope, ere many days.'

'We scarce think, your Lordship,' said one of the Crown lawyers,
springing to his feet amid a great rustling of papers, 'we scarce think
that it is necessary for the Crown to state any case. We have already
heard the whole tale of this most damnable and execrable attempt many
times over. The men in the dock before your Lordship have for the most
part confessed to their guilt, and of those wh