'I must ask your worship's permission to conduct the case in my own way,' returned the sergeant. 'I guarantee that these apparently trivial details are of material importance to the case.' 'You may proceed, Sergeant Dayrell. I trust to you not to encumber the depositions with needless details.' 'I shall bear in mind your worship's directions; and now, Miss Lawless, please to attend to me, and be careful in answering the next question.' Here he fixed his eyes meaningly upon her countenance. 'You remember the evening of Monday, the 23d of this month, when I saw you ride into your brother's camp at Balooka, in company with the prisoner, Trevanion?' 'Yes; I do.' 'Had he been with you and Ned at Balooka for some time previously?' There was a pause after the sergeant's measured and distinct words sounded through the court, and the witness trembled slightly when they first reached her ear. Then she raised her head, looked full at the two prisoners in the dock, and answered-- 'Yes; he had.' As the words left her lips, the face of Lance Trevanion worked like that of a man about to fall down in a fit. His eyes blazed with wrath and unrestrained passion. Wonder and scorn, anger and despair, struggled together in every feature, as if in a stage of demoniac possession. Placing his strong hand upon the rail of the dock, he shook the stout structure until it swayed and rattled again. 'You lie, traitress!' he said, in vibrating tones. 'I never saw Balooka before that evening, and you know it. Your words--like yourself--are false as hell!' 'I submit, your worship, that the witness must be protected,' Dayrell made haste to interpose. 'If she is to be intimidated, I cannot guarantee her most important evidence.' A curious phase of human nature is it,--well worthy of the attention of physiologists, but none the less known to those in the habit of attending criminal courts,--that you may with tolerable certainty detect a man deliberately swearing falsely when giving evidence on oath. Villain as he may be,--scoundrel of the deepest dye,--even _he_ does not altogether enjoy the sensation of, in cold blood, committing perjury before a crowd of comrades, every one of whom knows that he is forswearing himself. Thus feeling, there is generally some token of uneasiness or shamefacedness by which the experienced magistrate or judge, and most certainly his friends and fellows, can perceive his perjury. But, strange and mysterious as it may seem, _it is not so_ in the case of a female witness. She may be deposing to the truth of the most atrocious falsehood, to what the greater part of her hearers, as well as herself, _know to be false_, and not the quiver of an eyelid nor the tremor of a muscle reveals that she has called upon the Supreme Being to witness her deliberate betrayal of the truth. For all that can be discerned in the countenance--in her mien and manner she may be clinging to the truth with the constancy of a martyr.