There was a stir in the court as counsel announced his last witness.  A woman among the spectators was muttering something that was inaudible except to the few around her.  The woman was Mrs. Garth.  Willy Ray stood near her, but could not catch her words.

The witness stepped into the box.  There was no expression of surprise on Ralph’s face when he saw who stood there to give evidence against him.  It was the man who had been known in Lancaster as his “Shadow”; the same that had (with an earlier witness) been Robbie Anderson’s companion in his night journey on the coach; the same that passed Robbie as he lay unconscious in Reuben Thwaite’s wagon; the same that had sat in the bookseller’s snug a week ago; the same that Mrs. Garth had recognized in the corridor that morning; the same that Justice Hide had narrowly scrutinized when he rose in the court to claim the honor of ferreting the facts out of the woman Rushton.

He gave the name of Mark Wilson.

“Your name again?” said Justice Hide, glancing at a paper in his hand.

“Mark Wilson.”

Justice Hide beckoned the sheriff and whispered something.  The sheriff crushed his way into an inner room.

“The deceased James Wilson was your brother?”

“He was.”

“Tell my lords and the jury what you know of this matter.”

“My brother was a zealous agent of our gracious King,” said the witness, speaking in a tone of great humility.  “He even left his home—­his wife and family—­in the King’s good cause.”

At this moment Sim was overtaken by faintness.  He staggered, and would have fallen.  Ralph held him up, and appealed to the judges for a seat and some water to be given to his friend.  The request was granted, and the examination continued.

The witness was on the point of being dismissed when the sheriff re-entered, and, making his way to the bench, handed a book to Justice Hide.  At the same instant Sim’s attention seemed to be arrested to the most feverish alertness.  Jumping up from the seat on which Ralph had placed him, he cried out in a thin shrill voice, calling on the witness to remain.  There was breathless silence in the court.

“You say that your brother,” cried Sim,—­“God in heaven, what a monster he was!—­you say that he left his wife and family.  Tell us, did he ever go back to them?”

“No.”

“Did you ever hear of money that your brother’s wife came into after he’d deserted her—­that was what he did, your lordships, deserted her and her poor babby—­did you ever hear of it?”

“What if I did?” replied the witness, who was apparently too much taken by surprise to fabricate a politic falsehood.

“Did you know that the waistrel tried to get hands on the money for himself?”

Sim was screaming out his questions, the sweat standing in round drops on his brow.  The judges seemed too much amazed to remonstrate.