'I was going to say, sir, that as you never was a Cheap Jack, you can't understand what the feelings of one is, when she sees the general public afore her eyes. There comes a sort of swelling of the heart, and a desire of the mind to launch out into wonderful tales, and a longing to make the General Jackass believe that black is white, and chalk is cheese, that what is broken is sound, and what is old is new. But I will do my best. I'll shut my eyes and try to forget the general public, and fancy I'm with father in the van, for then I always said straight out what was true.' The winter sun streamed in at the south window over against Zita and flooded her as she stood in the witness-box. She had a scarlet and yellow flowered kerchief round her neck and over her shoulders, the white chip bonnet with black ribbons hardly contained her luxuriant, shining hair. The sun blazed in her face, flushing her ripe cheeks, making very June cherries of her lips, and adding a solar twinkle to the sparkle of intelligence and wit indwelling in her honest but roguish eyes. She stood as upright as a wand, her hands resting on the rail before her, and her head thrown back. The chairman bent to Sir Bates Dudley and whispered— 'What a good-looking wench it is!' 'Is she, indeed?' said the canon. 'You don't mean to say so.' It did not comport with ecclesiastical, certainly not with canonical, decorum and dignity to know whether a girl were good-looking or not. The chairman turned to the magistrate on his left and made the same remark. This magistrate was a layman, a retired admiral, who had come to live in Ely because his daughter was married to an official there. His name was Abbott. There was no etiquette in Her Majesty's Navy against observing good looks. He replied, 'Thunderingly so, Christian.' Christian was the chairman's name. 'I'll speak the truth,' said Zita; 'though it is against nature—just as it was against nature for that little fat gentleman to ride yesterday; but he did it, because he ought.' A roar of laughter at the expense of Sir Bates Dudley. 'Go on,' said the chairman, hardly controlling himself—the lay members of the Bench loved to have a joke at the expense of the clerical members. 'Tell your story, and tell it truthfully, or you'll get yourself into difficulties.' 'I mean to,' said Zita. Then she gave the narrative of the events of the evening of the riot in their order, with such lucidity and simplicity, and so frankly, that the truth of her story was stamped on every sentence. Now and then some odd remark, some allusion to her van or goods, or to the horse, provoked a laugh, and she kept Bench and public in good humour.