1676 PLEADINGS PRACTICE AND PROCESS AT LAW. [ART. 75

of the court, upon the plea of payment or performance of the conditions
or terms of the contract, ascertain and by their verdict find what sum
of money is really and justly due to the plaintiff; and upon such finding,
judgment shall be entered by the court for the penalty, to be released
upon payment of the sum of money so found to be due, and interest
on the same till paid, and costs of suit; and the sum really due as
aforesaid, or in any other manner ascertained, upon bonds and other
instruments of writing, with penalty, shall be considered in law as the
true debt and shall be so pleaded by and allowed to administrators and
others.

The statute of VIII. and IX. William III., ch. 11, section 8, when taken
in connection with this section, does not prevent repeated actions on a bond
as breaches thereof may occur. This section treats the sum really due as
the true debt secured by the bond, and renders the intervention of a court
of equity against the recovery of the penalty of the bond for any breach how-
ever small, unnecessary. Orendorff v. Utz, 48 Md. 304; Ahl v. Ail, 60 Md.
208.

A scire facias on a Judgment upon a bond which does not set out the
amount found to be due, does not set forth a good and perfect Judg-
ment, since If the amount due was ascertained, it should have been set out,
and if it waa not ascertained, the Judgment was merely interlocutory.
McKnew v. Duvall, 45 Md. 510.

This section applied. Warren v. Kendrick, 113 Md. 613; State v. Tabler,
41 Md. 239; State v. Wilson, 38 Md. 344.

This section referred to in discussing the allowance of interest upon the
claim of creditors in equity. Hammond v. Hammond, 2 Bl. 370.

Legal Sufficiency of Evidence.

1904, art. 75, sec. 91. 1894, ch. 516, sec. 87.

91. If the defendant in any action at law in contract or in tort shall,
at the close of the plaintiff's evidence and before offering any evidence
or defense, pray the court to instruct the jury that the plaintiff in such
action has offered no evidence legally sufficient to entitle the plaintiff
to recover, or a prayer to the same effect, and the court shall reject
such prayer, the defendant shall not be precluded from offering evidence
of defense, but any defendant in such action may offer evidence of
defense as fully and to the same extent as though such prayer had not
been offered.

This section has no application where the court grants the defendant's
prayer to take the case from the jury at the end of the plaintiff's case.
Object of this section. Schwanteck v. Berner. 96 Md. 143.

Where a defendant's prayer to take the case from the jury offered at the
close of the plaintiff's testimony is refused, and the defendant proceeds to
put in his case, the ruling of the court on such prayer is not open for review
upon appeal. This section distinguished from section 8. Barabasz v. Kabat,
91 Md. 55; New York, etc., Co. v. Jones, 94 Md. 35; United Rys. Co. v. Deane.
93 Md. 624.

As to the burden of proof in suits against a railroad company for injury to
live stock and from fire, see art. 23, sec. 307.

Measure of Damages for Abstracting Minerals from Plaintiff's Land.

Ibid. sec. 92. 1894, ch. 287. sec. 87 A.

92. In the absence of fraud, negligence or wilful trespass, the measure
of damages for the wrongful working and abstracting of another's