How, then, do they attempt to get rid of this difficulty? Why, says Captain Gordon, "_The Colonel Saib_ (by whom was meant Colonel Hannay) was not at Goondah, as stated in the letter, but at Succara, about eighteen miles from it, and therefore you ought not to pay much regard to this paper." But he does not deny the letter, nor was it possible for him to deny it. He says Colonel Hannay was not there. But how do we know whether Colonel Hannay was there or not? We have only his own word for it. But supposing he was not there, and that it was clearly proved that he was eighteen miles distant from it, Major Naylor was certainly with Captain Gordon at the time. Might not his Persian scribe (for he does not pretend to say he wrote the letter himself) take Major Naylor for a colonel, (for he was the superior officer to Captain Gordon,) and think him the Colonel Saib? For errors of that kind may be committed in our own country. Every day we may take a major for a lieutenant-colonel. This was an error that might easily have happened in such a case. He was in as high rank as Colonel Hannay; for Colonel Hannay at that time was only a major. I do not believe either of them was properly entitled to the name of Colonel Saib. I am ashamed, my Lords, to be obliged to remark upon this prevarication. Their own endeavors to get rid of their own written acts by contradictory evidence and false constructions sufficiently clear these women of the crimes of which they were accused; and I may now ask the prisoner at your bar how he dares to produce Captain Gordon here, how he dares thus to insult the Peers, how he dares thus to insult the public justice of his country, after not having dared to inquire, upon the spot, of this man, to whom he was referred by the Begums for an account of this very transaction? I hope your Lordships have got enough of this kind of evidence. All the rest is of the same batch, and of the same description,--made up of nothing but hearsays, except in one particular only. This I shall now mention to your Lordships. Colonel Popham and another gentleman have told you, that, in a battle with Cheyt Sing's forces, they took prisoners two wounded nudjeeves or swordsmen, and that these men told them that they were sent there by the Begums,--that they had got two rupees and two wounds, but that they thought two rupees a bad compensation for two wounds. These two men, with their two wounds and two rupees, had, however, been dismissed. It does not appear that this accident was considered by these officers to be of consequence enough to make them ever tell one word of it to Mr. Hastings, though they knew he was collecting evidence of the disaffection of the Begums, of all kinds, good, bad, and indifferent, from all sorts of persons.