Page:Sylvester Sound the Somnambulist (1844).djvu/423

"Dever."

"Isn't that somewhat strange?"

"Well, it certaidly bay appear to be so."

"I don't ask you what it may appear to be! I ask you whether it is, or not?"

"Well, perhaps it is stradge that I dever before discovered it."

"Perhaps!"

"Yes, perhaps. He looks add talks whed he is asleep, precisely the sabe as he does whed awake."

"Then up to the time which you have named, you never imagined him to be a somnambulist?"

"Doe, I certaidly dever did."

"Very well. That'll do."

Mr. Slashinger then called the Reverend Edward Rouse, and when the reverend gentleman had been sworn, he proceeded to examine him as follows:—

"You are, I believe, a clergyman?"

"I thank God I am."

"You know the defendant?"

"I do. When first I knew him I fancied that I saw him on my garden wall, helping himself to—"

"Exactly. We shall come to all that by-and-bye. You reside at Cotherstone?"

"I do: and whenever he comes down there to visit his aunt, something extraordinary is sure to occur: sometimes a 'ghost' appears in the village—sometimes the horse is taken out of the stable at night—sometimes—"

"Exactly. And many other extraordinary things occur for which you have been utterly unable to account. Now do these things ever occur when the defendant is absent?"

"Never! that's the point, as I said the other day—"

"Nothing of the kind ever happens at Cotherstone when he is in town?"

"Nothing! We are as quiet as possible when he is away; but the fact of his being a somnambulist affords a key—if I may use the expression—to all which we have heretofore regarded as inexplicable mysteries."

Mr. Phillpots then rose to cross-examine the reverend gentleman.

"You know the defendant," said he; "you know him well. Now will you take upon yourself, as a clergyman of the Church of England, to swear that he is a somnambulist?"

"Why, what else can he be?"

"No matter what else he can be; will you swear that he is a somnambulist?"

"Why, when we look at—"

"We don't want to look, sir, at anything but you. My question is plain. Will you swear that he is a somnambulist?"

"Well, perhaps I am not justified strictly in swearing it, but—"

"Of course not; there, that'll do; go down."