"And now"--Ronnie craned forward in his mounting excitement--"and now, Mrs. Towers, I want you to describe to his lordship and the jury, in your own words, exactly what happened in Robert Fielding's room on the afternoon of July 5." "I made Bob his tea, and I was helping him eat it when Bill came in," began the woman. No sounds save the scratch of reporters' pencils, the occasional tap of a boot-sole on the bare floor-boards, and the suppressed breathing of her tense audience interrupted the story Lucy Towers told her counsel and the court--a story so utterly resembling, yet so utterly differing from the toneless confession which the "hanging prosecutor" had read out the day before, a story so redolent of life and truth and certainty that, listening to it, it seemed as if one could actually see the dead man standing at the doorway of that bare tenement room, see the lifted stick in his hand, and hear his harsh, grim voice. "Bill said, 'I'll do you in. I'll do you both in, damn you.' He had his stick in Ms hand. He lifted his stick. I was frightened. I thought he meant to kill Bob. I thought he meant to kill both of us. I remembered the pistol. I ran to the cupboard. I pulled out the pistol. I pointed it at him. Bob said, 'Look out, Bill. The gun's loaded.' Bill said, 'You can't frighten me.' I thought he was going to kill Bob, so I fired. "So I fired." The little story ended to the indescribable, unbearable silence of men and women whose emotions are near to breaking-point. Through that unbearable silence, Ronnie's next question cut like a razor through taut string. "You say that your husband carried a stick. Can you describe that stick?" "It was a heavy stick." "Can't you tell me any more about it?" "Yes; it had a bit of lead in the handle." "Was he holding the stick by the handle?" "No. By the other end." "And you thought he meant to kill your cousin with that loaded stick?" "Yes. I felt sure of it. That was why I shot him." Ronnie paused again, making sure that his point should sink home in the minds of the jury. Then, picking up his copy of the confession, he put his last questions: "I have here the statement which you made at the time of your arrest. You say, 'I'm not sorry I killed my husband.' Why did you say that?" "Because I wasn't sorry--then." "But you are sorry now?" "Yes. I didn't mean to kill him. I don't know why I said that. I didn't quite know what I was saying." "And there was one other thing you said. You said, 'I love Bob very much.' Is that true?" "Yes." Lucy Towers answered fearlessly. "I do love him, but not in the way"--her eyes, which had scarcely left Ronnie's since the examination began, turned for a moment to Hector Brunton, huddled in his seat--"not in the way that _he_ tried to make out." "Thank you, Mrs. Towers. That's all I have to ask," finished Ronald Cavendish; and, seating himself, waited for Hector Brunton's onslaught.