The criticism usually levelled against an alibi is that the witnesses are either honestly mistaken about the day or have deliberately taken the movements of another day and applied them to the vital day. The alibi, if it can be properly called an alibi, in this case was not open to either criticism. The Friday was the late shopping night, just before the New Year. It was a day that could be easily recalled after the lapse of a week or two. The Thursday following was the day that Ross had been detained by the detectives for eight hours, and was not likely to be soon forgotten by the members or friends of the Ross family. Mrs. Ross could be making no mistake about the day, because it was in regard to her son’s detention that she went to the “Age” Office. The theory that the wrong day was deliberately chosen by the witnesses involves the inference that independent witnesses, like Mrs. Kee, Mr. Dawsey, Mr. Studd, Mr. Patterson, Mr. Bradley, and Mrs. Kennedy, all took part in a conspiracy with the object of saving a man who, if guilty, did not deserve to be saved. Anyone who had the advantage of conferring with them, or of hearing their testimony in the box, could not fail to be impressed by the story they told. ROSS’S FIRMNESS. As far as Ross himself is concerned, he not merely stoutly maintained his innocence from the day he was arrested to the day he was hanged, but his conduct and bearing throughout was that of an innocent man. It was not tactful or amiable. It was blustering and bad-tempered, and at times aggressive. But it was, throughout, that of a sullen man, suffering under a sense of wrong. He made a free statement to the police on the day that the body was recovered, admitting that he had seen a girl answering to the description of the murdered girl. On January 5, after, or in the course of, a detention of eight hours, he made a full statement to the police which was committed to writing. Not one word of that statement is shown to have been false, by evidence that is worth a moment’s serious consideration. A great deal of it the police did not dispute. A solid phalanx of witnesses, as has been shown, was called on the trial to bear out the statement, and not the smallest flaw was revealed by a skilful cross-examination in that long chain of evidence.