No, he had heard no sound of running footsteps, but he stood for a moment near the back fence of the Lequer place; there were people in the library until some man ran in calling for the doctor to come at once--and he did see a car leave the lane behind the Balfame place. He had thought nothing of it, however, as automobiles were everywhere all the time. No, he hadn't tried to see whether the car was driven by a man or woman or how many occupants it had. Not only was the night very dark (as far as he remembered, the car had no lamps), but his one idea was to get out of the neighbourhood. Rush put him through a grilling cross-examination, and although he could not shake his testimony, he made use of all his practised arts to exhibit the youth as a sorry coward who ran away when he heard a revolver-shot instead of rushing with the common instinct of American manhood to ascertain if it were the woman herself who had been the victim. How much had he been paid to give this testimony withheld at the coroner's inquest? Young Kraus' ruddy hues had deepened to purple some time since, and he shouted back that he had come forward only when that woman's lying friends were trying to fasten the crime upon his innocent papa. Here he was sternly admonished by the Judge to confine his answers to "Yes" and "No" unless he could control his temper. Rush forced him to reiterate that he had not had a glimpse of Mrs. Balfame's face that night, that he never had spoken to her at any time; and the lawyer remarked crushingly that the young man's brain must have been in a hopelessly confused state if he saw a car leave the lane so soon after the shooting--a car, moreover, without lights--and failed to connect this phenomenon with the immediately previous sound of a pistol-shot. It was evident that his brain moved so slowly that it had taken him almost a week to put a good story together. Young Kraus left the stand with his inborn sense of superiority over mere Americans severely shaken, but although his small angry eyes encountered more than one sneer, and many of those hostile spectators looked as if they would laugh outright were it not for their awe of the Judge, he had injured Mrs. Balfame far more than himself. Few believed him to be lying or that he had seen a vision, not a real woman, leave the Balfame house by the kitchen door. He was known to have been as sober as usual on the night of the dance, and as the evidence against his father had been regarded as fantastic from the first, there was no conceivable cause for him to lie.