But it was not till brawny Mrs. Cox took her stand in the witness-box that the absurdity of the Meroury’s story and the charge was exposed fully to a delighted audience.  Mrs. Cox marched into the box in an aggressive way, saluted the book with an emphatic and explosive kiss, and then stood erect, square-shouldered and defiant, giving the court and all concerned to understand by her attitude that it must not be imagined any advantage could be taken of her.  She told her story in a bluff dogmatic way.  She was bailed up by the miscreants and scared out of her seven senses.  They demanded her money or her life, and she believed that it was their intention to leave her ‘welterin’ in her gore’; and having said as much she squared round upon the lawyer, arms akimbo and head thrown back, inviting him to come on to his inevitable destruction.

‘Come, come, madam,’ said the barrister, ’you must not tell us you imagined for a moment you were ever in any serious danger from these terrible fellows.’

‘Mustn’t! mustn’t!’ cried Mrs. Cox.  ‘An’, indeed, why not, sir?  Who’re you to tell me I musn’t?’

Mrs. Cox stopped deliberately and carefully rolled up both sleeves of her dress.  Then, unhampered and in customary trim, she smote the cedar in front of her and cried: 

’Mustn’t, indeed!

‘No offence, ma’am,’ said the small lawyer in a conciliatory tone; ’no offence in the world.  Please explain what you did when attacked by the prisoners.’

‘What’ d I do?  First I said a prayer for me soul.’

‘And then?’

‘And then I grabbed one o’ the young imps, an’

I—­,

Here Mrs. Cox’s actions implied that she had a struggling bushranger in her grip.  She drew him over her knee, and then, for the education and edification of the court, went through the task of enthusiastically spanking a purely imaginary small boy.

The pantomime was most convincing, and provoked roars of laughter that completely drowned the shrill pipe of the policeman fiercely demanding order; when the noise had subsided Gable, flushed with excitement and with dancing eyes and jigging limbs, cried out ‘Oh, crickey!’ with such gusto that the laughter broke loose again in defiance of all restraint, and was maintained until the chairman of the bench, himself almost apoplectic from his efforts to swallow his mirth, arose and talked of clearing the court; then the crowd, fearful of missing the fun to come, quietened in a few seconds and the case was resumed.

‘You thrashed the young rip, Mrs. Cox,’ said the lawyer.  ’You did well.  A pity you did not serve them all alike and save us the folly of this most ridiculous case.’

‘I did grab another,’ said the witness, ‘an’ I—­’ Mrs. Cox repeated her eloquent pantomime.

‘Oh, crickey!’ cried Gable.  ‘Oh, I say, here’s a lark!’

‘Silence in court,’ squealed the asthmatical policeman.

‘Excellent,’ said the lawyer.  ’And so, madam, you drove off this desperate and bloodthirsty gang by simply slapping them all round?’