_Surgeon._ None whatever; but then there was nothing to go by, except
the head and the bones.

_Prisoner._ Have you experience in this kind? I mean, have you
inspected murdered bodies?

_Surgeon._ Yes.

_Prisoner._ How many?

_Surgeon._ Two before this.

_Prisoner._ O, pray, pray, do not say "before this"! I have great hopes
no murder at all hath been committed here. Let us keep to plain cases.
Please you describe the injuries in those two undoubted cases.

_Surgeon._ In Wellyn's the skull was fractured in two places. In
Sherrett's the right arm was broken, and there were some contusions on
the head; but the cause of death was a stab that penetrated the lungs.

_Prisoner._ Suppose Wellyn's murderers had thrown his body into the
water, and the fishes had so mutilated it as they have this one, could
you by your art have detected the signs of violence?

_Surgeon._ Certainly. The man's skull was fractured. Wellyn's, I mean.

_Prisoner._ I put the same question with regard to Sherrett's.

_Surgeon._ I cannot answer it; here the lungs were devoured by the
fishes; no signs of lesion can be detected in an organ that has ceased
to exist.

_Prisoner._ This is too partial. Why select one injury out of several?
What I ask is this: could you have detected violence in Sherrett's case,
although the fishes had eaten the flesh off his body.

_Surgeon._ I answer that the minor injuries of Sherrett would have been
equally perceptible; to wit, the bruises on the head, and the broken
arm; but not the perforation of the lungs; and that it was killed the
man.

_Prisoner._ Then, so far as you know, and can swear, about murder, more
blows have always been struck than one, and some of the blows struck in
Sherrett's case, and Wellyn's, would have left traces that fishes' teeth
could not efface?

_Surgeon._ That is so, if I am to be peevishly confined to my small and
narrow experience of murdered bodies. But my general knowledge of the
many ways in which life may be taken by violence--

The judge stopped him, and said that could hardly be admitted as
evidence against his actual experience.

The prisoner put a drawing of the castle, the mere, and the bridge, into
the witnesses' hands, and elicited that it was correct, and also the
distances marked on it. They had, in fact, been measured exactly for
her.

The hobnailed shoes were produced, and she made some use of them,
particularly in cross-examining Jane Bannister.

_Pris