Pot.  No; not then.

Mr. H.  But you do now?

Pot.  Yes; for I got into conversation with one of them, who told me that it meant the brain, the skull.

J.  N. (writing).  “The rent of ability is a cant phrase in use among these people signifying the head.”

Mr. H.  Well?

Pot.  Well, then they laughed and said, Well, as far as he is concerned, smash it when you can catch it.

Mr. H.  Did you gather whose head it was that they were speaking of?

Pot.  Yes; his lordship’s.

Mr. H. (impressively and plaintively).  And why?

Pot.  Because they said he had jugged their comrades like a damned old smoutch!

J.  N. Jugged?

Pot.  Put them in prison, my lord.

J.  N. (Aside:  That Norwich affair.) Wait!  I must write my self down a smoutch—­smoutch? no doubt a foreign word.

Mr. H.  What else have you heard the prisoner say.

Pot.  I have heard him threaten to make her Majesty the Queen take in washing.

J.  N.  Plain washing?

Pot.  Yes, my lord.

J.  N.  Not fancy work?

Pot.  No, my lord.

A Juryman.  Have you heard him suggest any means of doing all this?

Pot.  Yes, sir; for I have attended meetings of his association in disguise, when they were plotting means of exciting the populace.

Mr. H.  In which he took part?

Pot.  In which he took part.

Mr. H.  You heard him arranging with others for a rising of the lower orders?

Pot.  Yes, sir; and on the occasion, when I met him in the public house, I got into conversation with him, and he told me that his society numbered upwards of two millions. (J.  F. grins.)

The Juryman (anxiously).  Armed?

Pot.  He said there were arms in readiness for them.

Mr. H.  Did you find out where?

Pot.  Yes; at the premises of the Federationist League, 13 Farringdon Road.

Mr. H.  Did you search for them there?

Pot.  Yes.

Mr. H.  Did you find them?

Pot.  No; we found nothing but printing-stock and some very shabby furniture, and the office-boy, and three compositors.

Mr. H.  Did you arrest them?

Pot.  No; we thought it better not to do so.

Mr. H.  Did they oppose your search?

Pot.  No.

Mr. H.  What did they do?

Pot.  Well, they took grinders at me and said, “Sold!”

Mr. H.  Meaning, doubtless, that they had had an inkling of your search and had sold the arms?