Sergeant Dayrell's evidence was unsparingly criticised. To his calm and carefully worded statements, studiously colourless, but little exception could be taken. Still, more than one _historiette_ had been elicited from the distant part of the colony where he once was stationed which tended to establish his reputation for unscrupulousness, for desire for conviction at all risks. He was forced to acknowledge that he had been the apprehending constable in a well-known stock case near the New South Wales border, as well as to admit that his zeal on that occasion being in conflict with the law, had caused the committing magistrate to be mulcted in heavy costs and damages. These and other facts being mercilessly dragged forth somewhat detracted from the value of his evidence. Then Catharine Lawless was once more called. Again it seemed that the spectators, as upon the appearance on the stage of a favourite actress, awoke to more than common excitement and intensity of interest. All eyes were upon her as she walked composedly up to the witness-box. Dressed quietly but in perfect taste as before, there was so much grace and freedom about the girl's every movement--such self-possession in her bearing--that she looked superior to her surroundings. She was evidently on her guard against such a display of emotion or merely feminine weakness as had occurred at the first trial. Calmly and imperturbably she gave her evidence, and as before deposed to having seen Lance Trevanion in the companionship of her brother at Eumeralla, and also at Balooka long before the day of arrest. If there be any force in the modern doctrines of the projection of nerve force--of the subtle relation between the mesmeric will power and the object of its current--then, as for one moment she turned towards the dock and confronted the lurid light that blazed in Lance Trevanion's haughty and contemptuous regard, she should have trembled and fallen to the earth. But no such effect followed. She gazed back for an instant with a glance fierce and tameless as his own, then coldly averted her face as she repeated her lesson, as Mr. England vehemently characterised her statement. 'Then you still persist, Catharine Lawless,' said that gentleman, turning with unchivalrous suddenness upon his fair antagonist, 'you persist in declaring that you saw Lance Trevanion both at Balooka and Eumeralla on the date you have stated?' 'I have sworn I did see him,' she replied, while a shade of sullenness commenced to overspread her countenance. 'If these witnesses, Mr. Stirling, Mrs. Delf, Mrs. Polwarth and her husband, besides several others, have sworn that they saw him at Growlers' at a date which makes it absolutely impossible that he could have been within a hundred miles of the localities you mention, is that true or false?' 'I don't care what they swear, I have told the truth.' 'That is what they have sworn. Now, you know Mr. Stirling, Mrs. Delf, Jack Polwarth, and the rest, don't you?'