"I shall ask Your Honor to consider that my story may be true. I shall ask Your Honor to consider that if my story is true no man may speak for me. I saw no other man between Upham and the Garfield ditch--twenty-five miles. "You have heard the prosecution's theory. It is that I was stealing a calf belonging to the dead man--branding it; that he caught me in the act, and that I foully murdered him. If I can prove the first part of that theory to be entirely false; if I can demonstrate that even if I killed Adam Forbes I certainly did not kill him in the manner or for the motive set forth by the theory of the prosecution--then you may perhaps believe my unsupported statement as to the rest of it. And that is what I can do, if allowed the opportunity. I cannot, by myself, now or at any other time, absolutely prove my statement to be true. I can and will prove the theory of the prosecution to be absolutely false. To do that I rely upon myself--not upon my statement, but upon myself, my body, so much flesh and blood and bone, considered as an exhibit in this case, taken in connection with all known or alleged facts; on myself and my horse; on Adam Forbes' dead body and on the horse Adam Forbes rode that day; on the Bar Cross yearling I branded day before yesterday, a yearling that I can describe in detail, a yearling that can be found and must be found, a yearling that will be found following a Bar Cross cow. I have no fancy to be hanged by a theory. I demand to test that theory by facts. I demand that my horse be called to testify to the facts." "Mr. Gwinne, you may call the prisoner's horse," said the justice. "Spinal, you may act as the court's officer while Gwinne is gone." "His name is Twilight," added Johnny, "and he is over at the Gans stables." "I protest! Your Honor, I protest against such unmitigated folly," stormed Mr. Benjamin Attlebury Wade, in a hot fury of exasperation. "You are making a mockery of the law! There is no precedent on record for anything like this." "Here's where we make a new precedent, then," observed the court cheerfully. "I have given my instructions, and I'd be willing to place a small bet on going through with my folly. I don't know much about the law, but the people who put me here knew I didn't know much about the law when they elected me--so I guess they aimed to have me get at the rights of things in my own way." He twisted his scanty beard for a moment; his faded blue eyes peered over the rims of his glasses. "Not that it would make any great difference," he added. A little wearied from the strain of focalized effort, Johnny looked out across the blur of faces. Hobby Lull smiled at him, and Charlie See looked hardihood like his own. There were other friendly faces, many of them; and beyond and above them all shone the faces of his straining mates, Hiram and the three John Cross men. "Judge, may I speak to the prisoner?" asked Hiram Yoast. He tugged at a grizzled foretop. "You may."