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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 78

Lambert in the Dock

Lambert in the Dock.

When the rôles of accuser and accused were reversed, and Lambert after two abortive prosecutions had in 1895 to start his trial for perjury, Meikle's case against him was one of remarkable cogency. Lambert still remained without any direction corroboration of the alleged incidents of the 17th October the chief item of indirect corroboration was turned against him and Meikle received an immense reinforcement in other ways. His son, it is true, had died while he himself was in gaol but on the other hand he and his wife were able to testify for the first time. Meikle himself was under examination for about seven hours, during which he was not shaken in a single material particular. The conversations in which Lambert had said that he and another had been offered £50 to put sheep and skins on Meikle's land in order to get him into trouble, but that he would befriend Meikle and defeat the plot; the communication by Meikle to the police of the proposed trap with request for protection; the fact that when Lambert called on the night before the police entered he had a bag with him which when questioned he alleged to contain blankets, and which, according to Meikle, was just of a size to hold two sheepskins; the regular locking of the outhouses in consequence of Lambert first warning, and the failure to lock the smithy door that night because the key was missing after it had been used to admit Lambert—these points were now put with clearness, and some of them for the first time, before the Court. It was also proved that young Arthur Meikle, who had always been sickly lad, was so ill with pleurisy on the night of the alleged crime that he kept his bed, and it was doubtful whether he would ever get up again.