“It’s not true,” cried the witness, in a hurried manner, “I heard nothing.”

“This is no suborned witness, my lords,” said counsel in a cold voice, and with a freezing smile.  “Well, woman?”

“The tall man leapt off his horse, and there was a struggle.  The little man was swearing.  There was a heavy fall, and all was quiet once more.”

As she spoke the woman recoiled to the back of the box, and covered her face in her hands.

“What manner of man was the taller one?” “He had a strong face with big features and large eyes.  I saw him indistinctly.”

“Do you see him now?”.

“I cannot swear; but—­but I think I do.”

“Is the prisoner who stands to the left the man you saw that night?”

“The voice is the same, the face is similar, and he wears the same habit—­a long dark coat lined with light flannel.”

“Is that all you know of the matter?”

“I knew that a crime had been committed in my sight.  I felt that a dead body lay close beside me.  I was about to turn away, when I heard a third man come up and speak to the man on the horse.”

“You knew the voice?”

“It was the cottager who had given us shelter.  I ran back to the barn, snatched up my two children in their sleep, and fled away across the fields—­I know not where.”

Justice Hide asked the witness why she had not spoken of this before; three months had elapsed since then.

She replied that she had meant to do so, but it came into her mind that perhaps the cottager was somehow concerned in the crime, and she remembered how good he and his daughter had been to her.

“How had she come to make the disclosures now?”

The witness explained that when she crushed her way into the court a week ago it was with the idea that the prisoner might be her husband.  He was not her husband, but when she saw his face she remembered that she had seen him before.  A man in the body of the court had followed her out and asked her questions.

“Who was the man?” asked the judge, turning to the sheriff.

The gentleman addressed pointed to a man near at hand, who rose at this reference, with a smile of mingled pride and cunning, as though he felt honored by this public disclosure of his astuteness.  He was a small man with a wrinkled face, and a sinister cast in one of his eyes, which lay deep under shaggy brows.  We have met him before.

The judge looked steadily at him as he rose in his place.  After a minute or two he turned again to look at him.  Then he made some note on a paper in his hand.

The witness looked jaded and worn with the excitement.  During her examination Sim had never for an instant upraised his eyes from the ground.  The eagerness with which Ralph had watched her was written in every muscle of his face.  When liberty was given him to question her, he asked in a soft and tender voice if she knew what time of the night it might be when she had seen what she had described.