Gell's time had come at last--the great moment he had been waiting for so long. Although he had been shaken for an instant by Mrs. Collister's silence he was not afraid now. He was going to play his last and greatest card--put the prisoner in the box to demolish for ever the monstrous accusation that had been intended to ruin the life of an innocent woman. The Deemster trembled as he saw Gell look round the Court with a confident smile before he called his witness. Bessie, whose big eyes had flamed with fury during her mother's cross-examination, passed with a firm step from the dock to the witness-box. In answer to Gell's questions she repeated the evidence she had given before the High Bailiff, only more emphatically and with a certain note of defiance. When the Attorney-General rose to cross-examine her, it was observed that he, too, had an air of confidence, as if something had become known to him since morning. "Do you adhere to your plea?" he asked. "Indeed I do. Why shouldn't I?" said Bessie. "Think again before it is too late. Do you still say that you have never had a child, and therefore never killed and never buried one?" "Certainly I say so," said Bessie. "I don't know what you are talking of." "Constable," said the Attorney, turning to Cain, "open your parcel." There was a whispering among the spectators in Court, while the constable was cutting the string and opening the brown-paper parcel. The Deemster was shuddering, Gell's lower lip was trembling, and Fenella (who was sitting, as before, in front of the dock) was breathing deeply. The prisoner alone was unmoved. The sun (it was now going round to the West) was shining down on her from the lantern light. It lit up with pitiful vividness her thin white face with its look of confidence and contempt. "Do you know what this is?" asked the Attorney, holding up a portion of a white silk scarf. Bessie started as if she had seen a ghost. Then, recovering herself and turning her eyes away, she said, remembering what Gell had told her, "I know nothing about it." "You have never seen it before?" "I know nothing about it." The Attorney-General put the scarf outstretched on the table in front of him, and held up a narrower strip of the same material. "Do you know anything about this, then?" Bessie gasped and was silent for a moment. Then she said again, but with a stammer, "I know nothing about it." "Will you swear that it never belonged to you?" A stabbing memory came back to Bessie. She remembered what she had heard about "a remnant" when the constables were ranging her room, and seeing no way of escape by further denial she said, "Oh yes, I remember it now. I found it on the road when I was on my way home and bound it about my hat to keep it from blowing off in the wind." The silence which had fallen upon the Court was broken by an audible drawing of breath. Gell, who had risen and leaned forward, dropped back.