1791-12-30 (static/transcriptions/1791/12/249.jpg)

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the case with Middleditch. I do not recollect, that the prisr & Hopkins had been friends and messmates: at Christmas 1790, & for five months before, I had been in the hospital. I have known the prisr five years, but cannot say, that, in all that time, I knew the prisoner do any spiteful or malicious act.

Exd by the Jury
I did not see him load his piece, nor busy about it, as if loading it. When he went out for 5 or 6 minutes he did not take the piece with him. From the time when the dispute began, he could not have loaded it without my knowledge: it must have been loaded with powder before, but the pisa might have been put in, without my knowing it, but hardly. At that season (20 Sept:)