_Examination of Witnesses._--The examination of witnesses, who were also accusers, marked the beginning of proceedings. It is doubtful if the indictment against criminals was in writing. The first witness who was to testify was led into an adjoining room and solemnly warned. He was asked questions similar to the following: Is it not probable that your belief in the prisoner's guilt is derived from hearsay or circumstantial evidence? In forming your opinions concerning the guilt of the accused, have you or not been influenced by the remarks of persons whom you regard as reputable and trustworthy? Are you aware that you will be submitted to a most searching examination? Are you acquainted with the penalty attached to the crime of perjury? After this preliminary warning, conveyed in these questions, had been given, the most learned and venerable of the judges administered to the witness the following impressive adjuration: Forget not, O witness, that it is one thing to give evidence in a trial as to money, and another in a trial for life. In a money suit, if thy witness-bearing shall do wrong, money may repair that wrong. But in this trial for life, if thou sinnest, the blood of the accused, and the blood of his seed to the end of time, shall be imputed unto thee.... Therefore was Adam created one man and alone, to teach thee that if any witness shall destroy one soul out of Israel, he is held by the Scripture to be as if he had destroyed the world; and he who saves one such soul to be as if he had saved the world.... For a man from one signet-ring may strike off many impressions, and all of them shall be exactly alike. But He, the King of the kings of kings, He the Holy and the Blessed, has struck off from His type of the first man the forms of all men that shall live; yet so, that no one human being is wholly alike to any other. Wherefore let us think and believe that the whole world is created for a man such as he whose life hangs on thy words. But these ideas must not deter you from testifying from what you actually know. Scripture declares: "The witness who hath seen or known, and doth not tell, shall bear his iniquity." Nor must ye scruple about becoming the instrument of the alleged criminal's death. Remember the Scriptural maxim: "In the destruction of the wicked, there is joy." At the close of this solemn exhortation, the examination of the witness commenced. The Hakiroth, seven questions prescribed by law, touching the identity of the prisoner and fixing the elements of time and place, were asked. They were as follows: Was it during a year of jubilee? Was it an ordinary year? In what month? On what day of the month? At what hour? In what place? Do you identify this person?