The answer to the suggestion that that was a minute description for a man to give of a girl’s dress is that, in the first place, it was given mainly in answer to questions, and it ought not to be difficult for a man to visualise the girl’s dress after a lapse of 18 hours, especially as she was dressed in conventional school-girl style. (Her dress was quite as accurately described by a hotel porter who saw her walking up Little Collins Street.) Harding’s “confession” credits Ross with saying that he told the police she wore boots, and with suggesting that this was an erroneous description designed to mislead. The evidence does not bear Harding out, and the idea that in any case the trifling discrepancy was designed to deceive is ridiculous. And while Harding suggests that Ross was purposely inaccurate in order to deceive, the Crown Prosecutor used Ross’s accurate description to show that he was accurate not merely because he had seen the girl in the Arcade, but because he had taken her clothing off. Since the question of the disposal of the clothing was supposed to have been raised by Harding and dealt with by Ross, it is curious, by the way, that nothing was said to Harding of the underclothing, or of the distinguishing hat, or of the parcel of meat, for these, too, had to be disposed of. But this is only another proof that Harding put nothing into Ross’s mouth which was likely to be falsified by independent testimony. Here, again, this very matter of hesitation about the boots or shoes tells entirely in Ross’s favour. Either he gave a description to the best of his ability, or he gave a description purposely designed to deceive. The latter alternative may be dismissed at once, because the description was so nearly accurate that it is absurd to suppose it was meant to mislead. There remains, then, the alternative that he described the dress to the best of his ability. A man describing the appearance of a conventionally-dressed school-girl has not room to go far astray. The one thing he would not be likely to remember, or to carry in the mind’s eye, was whether she had on boots or shoes—especially if her stockings were black. But if Ross had stripped the body, that is the one thing that he would have been clear about, for by the hypothesis he took the boots off, and he could hardly have forgotten the gruesome task of unlacing them. THE LIGHT IN THE SALOON.