ONE:Calverley had no alternative but compliance: but it was provoking almost beyond endurance to have a creature who annoyed him so much, completely, as it were, in his power, and yet be unable to avail himself of the circumstance. There was no alternative, however; for, as we have said before, he was unarmed, and, withal, no fighting man. His chamber was retired, and the extortioner a desperate, unprincipled being, and so Calverley doled out a few pieces of silver, and a piece of gold, which Black Jack snatching up, departed; but as he closed the door, a chuckling laugh, and a drawn bolt, told Calverley that he was overreached by his wily confederate."Isabella, make no promises," interrupted De Boteler"parley not with such as he." And, striving to calm himself so as to speak dispassionately, he added, turning to the smith, "Walter Turner, you are acquainted with the spot that shelters Stephen Holgrave, and I insist that you instantly reveal it."
THREE:
THREE:That same day, Calverley summoned, or rather packed, a jury at which he himself presided; and a verdict of wilful murder was returned against Edith. Apprehensive, however, that the charge of poisoning might not be sustained upon the unsupported testimony of Mary Byles, he easily influenced the credulous jurors to believe that witchcraft had as much to do with the child's death as poison. His usual tact, however, had forsaken him on this occasion, and it was not until the verdict was announced and recorded, that the unwelcome conviction flashed across his mind, that the temporal courts could exercise no jurisdiction over the crime of witchcraft. It was now too late to alter the language of the inquisition. It had gone forth to hundreds who awaited its promulgation with intense anxiety; and the language of the verdict that "Edith Holgrave delivered to Mary Byles, a certain charmed or poisonous drug, for the purpose of destroying Roland De Boteler, and which said drug was administered to, and caused the death of, the said Roland," was, in a few hours, familiar to the whole town and neighbourhood.
THREE:Who has not loaded ye with curses sore