hundred yards nearer London, and the prosecution made much of this, as
if a dog, with plenty of leisure and a feud against tramps, could not
move two hundred yards, or much more, if he were taking a walk abroad,
to combat the object of his dislike. Bennet knew that the dog was the
tanner's; probably he saw the dog when he met the wayfarer, and it
does not follow that the wayfarer herself called it 'the tanner's
dog.' Bennet fixed the date with precision. Four days later, hearing
of the trouble at Mrs. Wells's, Bennet said, 'I will be hanged if I
did not meet the young woman near this place and told her the way to
London.' Mr. Davy could only combat Bennet by laying stress on the
wayfarer's talking of 'the tanner's dog.' But the dog, at the moment
of the meeting, was probably well in view. Bennet knew him, and Bennet
was not asked, 'Did the woman call the dog "the tanner's dog," or do
you say this of your own knowledge?' Moreover, the tannery was well in
view, and the hound may have conspicuously started from that base of
operations. Mr. Davy's reply was a quibble.

His closing speech merely took up the old line: Elizabeth was absent
to conceal 'a misfortune'; her cunning mother was her accomplice.
There was no proof of Elizabeth's unchastity; nay, she had an
excellent character, 'but there is a time, gentlemen, when people
begin to be wicked.' If engaged for the other side Mr. Davy would have
placed his '_Nemo repente fuit turpissimus_'--no person of unblemished
character wades straight into 'innocent blood,' to use his own phrase.

The Recorder summed up against Elizabeth. He steadily assumed that
Nash was always right, and the neighbours always wrong, as to the
girl's original story. He said nothing of Bennet; the tanner's dog had
done for Bennet. He said that, if the Enfield witnesses were right,
the Dorset witnesses were wilfully perjured. He did not add that, if