There was no question of poor Frieda's making a good personal impression upon spectators or jury, no matter how worthy her motives. She had saved almost every penny of her wages since coming to America; it had been her lover's intention to emigrate to Brabant County as soon as his term of service was over, and her housewifely intention to greet him with a furnished cottage. Since the war began, she had sent all her savings to East Prussia lest her people starve. Dress in any circumstances would never tempt her. Economy was her religion, and she cherished no illusions about her face and form. To-day she wore a skirt of an old voluminous cut and a jacket with high puckered sleeves. The colour had once been brown. Her coarse blonde hair met her eyebrows in a thick bang, and its high knob was surmounted by a sailor hat a size too small. Her thick-set body was uncorseted, and her indeterminate features were lost in the width and flatness of her face. Only the little eyes beneath the heavy thatch of hair alternately glowed dully and spat fire. The Judge sternly suppressed the titter that ran over the court-room as this caricature mounted the witness-stand, and the district attorney, in spite of frequent interruptions, elicited a remarkably clear and coherent statement. The Judge sustained him, for here was a real witness, and Miss Appel not only had been as thoroughly rehearsed as Mrs. Figg, but she had a neat precise little mind set with rows of pigeonholes that ejected their contents in routine when her coach pressed the cognate button. She had come home abruptly from the dance-hall as she had an insupportable toothache--had run all the way, as she had some toothache-drops in her room. She was in such agony she hardly had noticed that her friend Conrad Kraus was behind her. When she reached her room she had applied the drops, and to her horror they made the pain worse. After walking the floor for perhaps ten minutes--she didn't know or care whether it was ten or fifteen minutes--she was just starting to go down-stairs and heat some water for her bag when she heard the kitchen door open and shut. She held her breath and did not answer when Mrs. Balfame called, as she feared she was wanted and was determined to do nothing for anybody while her tooth ached like that. Mrs. Balfame's voice had sounded quite breathless, as if she had been running. In a moment Frieda heard her go into the dining-room then back to the kitchen, and turn on the tap,--not the filter, which made no noise,--and then she heard one glass clink against another on the pantry shelf. After that, Mrs. Balfame went upstairs from the front hall and the witness returned to her room and threw herself on the bed, where she remained until Mr. Cummack came and asked her to go downstairs and make coffee. By this time her tooth ached so she didn't care what she did.