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en indictment for the murder of a man, who dwelt in the same parish
with the prisoner. The first witness against him deposed, that on a
certain day mentioned by the witness, in the morning, as he was go-
ing through a close, which he particularly described, as some distance
from the path, he saw a person lying in a condition that denoted him
to be either dead or drunk; that he went to the party, and found him
actually dead, two wounds appearing on his breast, and his shirt and
clothes much stained with blood ; that the wounds appeared to the
witness to have been given by the puncture of a fork or some such in-
strument, and looking about he discovered a fork lying near the
corpse, which he took up; and observed it to be marked with the ini-
tial letters of the prisoner's name ; the witness at the same time pro-
duced the fork in court, which the prisoner owned to be his, and
waived askinFr the witness any questions.
'° A second witness deposed, that on the morning of the day on
which the deceased was killed, the witness had risen early, with an in-
tention to go to a neighboring market town, which he named ; that as
he was standing in the entry of his own dwelling-house, the street
door being open, he saw the prisoner come by, dressed in a suit of
clothes, the color and fashion of which the witness described; that he
(the witness) was prevented from going to market, and that afterward
the first witness brought notice to the town, of the death and wounds
of the deceased, and of the prisoner's fork being found near the corpse;
that upon this report the prisoner was apprehended, and carried be-
fore a justice of the peace, whom he named and pointed at, he being
then present in the court; that he (the witness) followed the prisoner
to the justice's house, and attended his examination, during which he
observed the exchange of raiment which the prisoner had made since
the time when the witness had first seen him in the morning; that at
the time of such examination the prisoner was dressed in the same
clothes which he had on at the time of the trial, and that on the, wit-
ness charging him with having changed his clothes, he gave several
shuffling answers, and would have denied it; that upon the witness
.having mentioned this circumstance of the change of dress, the justice
granted a warrant to search the prisoner's house for the clothes de-
scribed by the witness as having been put off since the morning; that
the witness attended and assisted at the search, and that after nice in-
quiry for two hours and upward, the very clothes which the witness
had described, were discovered concealed in a straw bed. He then
produced the bloody clothes in court, which the prisoner owned to be
his clothes, and to have been, thrust into the straw bed with an inten-
tion to conceal them, on account of their being bloody.
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