You vould not go for to bully I so!" "And pray, my good fellow, what is it that you know that should make me treat you as if I thought you an honest man ?" The witness had now relapsed into sullenness, and only answered by a sort of grunt.

Brandon, who knew well how to sting a witness into communicativeness, continued his questioning till the witness, re-aroused into anger, and it may be into indiscretion, said in a low voice,-- "Hax Mr.Swoppem the pawnbroker what I sold 'im on the 15th hof February, exactly twenty-three yearn ago." Brandon started back, his lips grew white, he clenched his hands with a convulsive spasm; and while all his features seemed distorted with an earnest yet fearful intensity of expectation, he poured forth a volley of questions, so incoherent and so irrelevant that he was immediately called to order by his learned brother on the opposite side.

Nothing further could be extracted from the witness.

The pawnbroker was resummoned: he appeared somewhat disconcerted by an appeal to his memory so far back as twenty-three years; but after taking some time to consider, during which the agitation of the usually cold and possessed Brandon was remarkable to all the court, he declared that he recollected no transaction whatsoever with the witness at that time.

In vain were all Brandon's efforts to procure a more elucidatory answer.