`Come!' said the stranger, `I'll help you. You don't deserve help, but I'll help you. Look at that paper you hold in your hand. What is it?'

`What is it?' repeated Mr Wopsle, eyeing it, much at a loss.

`Is it,' pursued the stranger in his most sarcastic and suspicious manner, `the printed paper you have just been reading from?'

`Undoubtedly.'

`Undoubtedly. Now, turn to that paper, and tell me whether it distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that his legal advisers instructed him altogether to reserve his defence?'

`I read that just now,' Mr Wopsle pleaded.

`Never mind what you read just now, sir; I don't ask you what you read just now. You may read the Lord's Prayer backwards, if you like - and, perhaps, have done it before to-day. Turn to the paper. No, no, no my friend; not to the top of the column; you know better than that; to the bottom, to the bottom.' (We all began to think Mr Wopsle full of subterfuge.) `Well? Have you found it?'

`Here it is,' said Mr Wopsle.

`Now, follow that passage with your eye, and tell me whether it distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that he was instructed by his legal advisers wholly to reserve his defence? Come!Do you make that of it?'

Mr Wopsle answered, `Those are not the exact words.'

`Not the exact words!' repeated the gentleman, bitterly. `Is that the exact substance?'

`Yes,' said Mr Wopsle.

`Yes,' repeated the stranger, looking round at the rest of the company with his right hand extended towards the witness, Wopsle. `And now I ask you what you say to the conscience of that man who, with that passage before his eyes, can lay his head upon his pillow after having pronounced a fellow-creature guilty, unheard?'

We all began to suspect that Mr Wopsle was not the man we had thought him, and that he was beginning to be found out.

`And that same man, remember,' pursued the gentleman, throwing his finger at Mr Wopsle heavily; `that same man might be summoned as a juryman upon this very trial, and, having thus deeply committed himself, might return to the bosom of his family and lay his head upon his pillow, after deliberately swearing that he would well and truly try the issue joined between Our Sovereign Lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, and would a true verdict give according to the evidence, so help him God!'

We were all deeply persuaded that the unfortunate Wopsle had gone too far, and had better stop in his reckless career while there was yet time.

The strange gentleman, with an air of authority not to be disputed, and with a manner expressive of knowing something secret about every one of us that would effectually do for each individual if he chose to disclose it, left the back of the settle, and came into the space between the two settles, in front of the fire, where he remained standing: his left hand in his pocket, and he biting the forefinger of his right.

`From information I have received,' said he, looking round at us as we all quailed before him, `I have reason to believe there is a blacksmith among you, by name Joseph - or Joe - Gargery. Which is the man?'