'I have just heard two people swear to it,' the girl replied hastily, as if fearful that this welcome solution of a dreadful doubt should be taken from her. 'What more do I need?' 'Just so. But you must perceive that in the event--improbable, I admit, but possible--that these witnesses were mistaken or misleading, you have no knowledge of your own to fall back upon?' 'If I could only see them both together,' pleaded poor Tessie ruefully, 'I am sure I could pick out the one I saw at Eumeralla.' 'I am afraid there is no chance of that,' said the barrister, 'unless Sergeant Dayrell can produce him.' 'Perhaps it would be convenient,' answered Dayrell, in the most coldly incredulous tones, 'if I could produce a counterpart of the prisoner, Lawless, at the same time. I do not wish to distress the last witness, but one would be quite as easy as the other.' The girl faced round, as his clear but slightly raised voice sounded through the court, and looked full at him, with scorn and indignation in every line of her countenance. 'I thought better of you, Francis Dayrell,' she said. 'You are acting a falsehood, and you know it.' Dayrell's lips moved slightly, but no sound came from them for a moment. He bowed with an affectation of extreme courtesy before addressing the Bench. 'Your Honour, I claim protection against such an imputation. But I make great allowance for the witness, whose relation to the prisoners excuses much.' His Honour was understood to reprove the witness mildly but impressively, and to express a hope that she would abstain from all aggressive remarks in future. Tessie's evidence being concluded, the Crown Prosecutor proceeded to address the jury, pointing out what, in his opinion, were the salient points of the case as brought out in evidence. 'In the first place, they would remark that large numbers of horses had been and were at that very time being systematically stolen from the miners. There existed no doubt, in the minds of persons capable of forming an opinion on such matters, that a well-organised and widely-spread association had been formed, by means of which horses stolen in one colony were driven by unfrequented routes to another, for the purpose of sale. It was not as if an occasional animal here and there had been taken. That offence, criminal in itself, doubtless, deserved some punishment. But, considering the great value of horses at the diggings, their almost vital importance in the ordinary course of mining industry, and the difficulty of following up and punishing marauders without ruinous loss of time and expense, he was there to tell the jury that a greater wrong, a more flagrant injustice, could not be inflicted on any mining community.