During all this time Thure and Bud had been doing some very serious and some very rapid thinking. At first the suddenness and the unexpectedness of the rush of men upon them in the busy street, followed so swiftly by their arrest and the dreadful accusations of the two men, whom they had every reason to believe had committed the crime themselves, had almost completely benumbed their faculties; but this condition of mind had lasted only a short time, and long before they reached the place of trial their minds were busy with the dreadful problem of how to prove themselves innocent of the crime charged, when two men were ready to swear that they saw them commit the crime, and when they did not have, could not have, a single witness who could swear to the truthfulness of their statements concerning the miner's death. No one but themselves had seen him die; and, so far as they knew, no one but themselves and their accusers knew the cause of his death. If they only had time to send home--But, even if they had witnesses from home, what could they prove? Only that the two boys had brought the dead miner home and had buried him; and that would be no proof that they had not killed him and invented the story of the two robbers. True, on their side, they could accuse the two men of committing the murder themselves; but they had no positive proofs that they were guilty of the crime, only the description of his assailants given them by the dying miner. There might be other men with broken noses and pock-marked faces. All that they could swear to of their own knowledge was that one of the men they had seen murdering the old miner was larger than the other. They had not got near enough to the murderers to be able to recognize them again, even if they should see them, except by the description given by the murdered man. And for them to accuse the two men, who had caused their arrest, of the murder, in itself would look suspicious to those who did not know the real facts and would have a tendency to make them doubt their whole story of the death of the miner.