But, went on the advocate for the defence, collecting himself again, in this respect, also, we can set our minds at rest, thanks to the accused herself. It might seem well to her advantage to divide the blame here, but she had not attempted to do so. She had entirely and without reserve absolved Axel Ström from any complicity whatever in the fact of her having taken his shirt instead of something of her own on her way to the water--that is, on her way to the woods to gather juniper. There was not the slightest reason for doubting the asseveration of the accused on this point; her depositions had throughout been found in accordance with the facts, and the same was evidently the case in this. Had the shirt been given her by the man, this would have been to presuppose a killing of the child already planned--the accused, truthful as she was, had not attempted to charge even this man with a crime that had never been committed. Her demeanour throughout had been commendably frank and open; she had made no endeavour to throw the blame on others. There were frequent instances before the court of this delicacy of feeling on the part of the accused, as, for instance, the fact that she had wrapped up the body of the child as well as she could, and put it away decently, as the Lensmand had found it. Here the presiding justice interposed, merely as a matter of form, observing that it was grave No. 2 which the Lensmand had found--the grave in which Axel had buried the body after its removal from the first. "True, that is true. I stand corrected," said the advocate, with all proper respect for the president of the court. Perfectly true. But--Axel had himself stated that he had only carried the body from one grave and laid it in the other. And there could be no doubt but that a woman was better able to wrap up a child than was a man--and who best of all? Surely a mother's tender hand? The presiding justice nods. In any case--could not this girl--if she had been of another sort--have buried the child naked? One might even go so far as to say that she might have thrown it into a dustbin. She might have left it out under a tree in the open, to freeze to death--that is to say, of course, if it had not been dead already. She might have put it in the oven when left alone, and burnt it up. She might have taken it up to the river at Sellanraa and thrown it in there. But this mother did none of these things; she wrapped the dead child neatly in a cloth and buried it. And if the body had been found wrapped neatly when the grave was opened, it must be a woman and not a man who had so wrapped it.