After heaping up a good deal more denunciatory scorn upon these two and their testimony, he came to Pollock's evidence. He had no wish to impute _mala fides_ to a man of known honesty. Still, honest men were mistaken sometimes. This matter of identity rested upon evidence very shadowy. As to recognising the accused when he saw Durnford by lamplight on the beach, he, the speaker, prayed them to receive this statement with the greatest possible reserve. Here was the rector of Wandsborough and his curate, Mr Turner, both of whom were far better acquainted with the accused's appearance than the witness Pollock, yet both these gentlemen had unhesitatingly sworn not only that they utterly failed to identify the prisoner in Robert Durnford, but that the barest suspicion as to such identity had never crossed their minds--and had not done so from that day to this. And further--here he begged the jury to give him all their attention--the lady rescued by Durnford was Dr Ingelow's daughter. She was at that time, to her credit be it said, something more than interested in his client, whose wife she subsequently became, a fact which precluded her from giving valuable evidence on Mr Dorrien's behalf. Was it likely then, he asked, that this estimable lady would have kept silence these two years and a half as to who her rescuer really was--that she should never have mentioned the fact to her own father, with whom she had ever been on the most dutiful and affectionate terms? Why, of course it was not. He put it to them as sensible men--fathers themselves, most probably--and so on. "By Jove! Windgate's scored a point there, Rogers," whispered the sporting junior. "If only he can squash the envelope business!" But this was just what he could not--and Mr Windgate knew it himself. He tried his best though, as also with the other damning points. At last his speech came near its close.