Charles smiled incredulously, but his smile changed to a look of surprised recognition, for the principal witness, who just then stood up to take the oath, was none other than the girl they had met in Leveson Park. Many a curious eye was turned on that fair honest face; the judge himself seemed to recognize her, and the marshal to forget his habitual composure, in astonishment that one so young and pretty, should be the heroine of such a tale; but, without either the vanity or the bashfulness nearly always allied to it, which would have upset most young people in her position, the girl told her story modestly and plainly, like one who felt she had done her duty, and made no display about it. Her evidence was simply to the effect that her name was Grace Greenside, that she was a servant at Daisy Dell--the local designation of a property occupied by one of the better class of farmers in the shire--and had been for two years maid-of-all-work at the farm-house, which was situated in a solitary part of the country, and at some distance from the high road. On the fifth of the previous month, it being Sunday, and the other three servants having gone in different directions, her mistress took their little boy and girl with them to the parish church, about a mile distant, leaving her alone in the house, with strict orders not to quit it, and admit none but special friends of the family till their return; on account, as she believed, of a considerable sum of money which her master had drawn from the bank but a few days before, for the purchase of an adjoining farm. Soon after they were gone, two men, one of whom was the prisoner, knocked loudly at the front door, and demanded admission, which, owing to her orders, and their suspicious appearance, she refused, when they tried to force an entrance; but, arming herself with her master's loaded gun, she defended the premises, which were well secured--being built, as the girl described, in old fighting times--till, by sounding one of those antiquated horns, kept for similar purposes in many an old country house, she alarmed half the parish, and men were seen coming across the fields, on which the assailants fled. The prisoner, however, carried with him a fine vest of her master's, which, owing to an accident, had been spread out to dry on a hedge hard by; and, bitterly blaming herself for leaving the article within his reach, the girl pursued him in hopes of recovering it, and actually overtook, laid hold of, and detained him till the neighbors came up and completed the capture, in spite of his blows, by which she had been so seriously injured as to be confined to the house till the previous day, when she walked with great difficulty about two miles to see her relatives.