The hand of Jesse Hexam, commonly called Gaffer on the river and along shore, is the hand that done that deed.

His hand and no other.' The two friends glanced at one another with more serious faces than they had shown yet.
'Tell us on what grounds you make this accusation,' said Mortimer Lightwood.
'On the grounds,' answered Riderhood, wiping his face with his sleeve, 'that I was Gaffer's pardner, and suspected of him many a long day and many a dark night.

On the grounds that I knowed his ways.

On the grounds that I broke the pardnership because I see the danger; which I warn you his daughter may tell you another story about that, for anythink I can say, but you know what it'll be worth, for she'd tell you lies, the world round and the heavens broad, to save her father.

On the grounds that it's well understood along the cause'ays and the stairs that he done it.