“Well, trot her out!  Where is she?”

“She’s on her way to Dyea,” Pierce insisted.  “She can’t be far—­”

‘Poleon Doret was angry.  “I don’ listen to no woman be joke ’bout, you hear?  Dis boy spik true.  He was in Linderman las’ night, for I seen him on top of Chilkoot yesterday myse’f, wit’ pack on his back so beeg as a barn.”

“Do you know the accused?” queried the spokesman.

’Poleon turned with a shrug.  “Non!  No!  But—­yes, I know him li’l bit.  Anybody can tell he’s hones’ boy.  By Gar!  She’s strong feller, too—­pack lak hell!”

Pierce Phillips was grateful for this evidence of faith, inconclusive as it was in point of law.  He was sorry, therefore, to see the Frenchman, after replying shortly, impatiently, to several senseless cross-questions, force his way out of the crowd and disappear, shaking his head and muttering in manifest disgust at the temper of his townsmen.

But although one friend had gone, another took his place—­a champion, by the way, whom Pierce would never have suspected of being such.  Profiting by the break in the proceedings, Lucky Broad spoke up.

“Frenchy was right—­this kid’s on the square,” he declared.  “I’m the gentleman who gathered his wheat at Dyea—­he fairly fed it to me, like he said—­so I guess I’m acquainted with him.  We’re all assembled up to mete out justice, and justice is going to be met, but, say! a sucker like this boy wouldn’t know enough to steal!”

It was doubtful if this witness, well-intentioned as he was, carried conviction, for, although his followers took their cue from him and applauded loudly, their very manifestations of faith aroused suspicion among the honest men present.

One of the latter, a red-faced, square-shouldered person, thrust a determined countenance close to Broad’s and cried, angrily:  “Is that so?  Well, I’m for hangin’ anybody you boost!”

This sentiment met with such instantaneous second that the confidence-man withdrew precipitately.  “Have it your own way,” he gave in, with an airy gesture.  “But take it from me you’re a bunch of boobs.  Hangin’ ain’t a nice game, and the guy that hollers loudest for it is usually the one that needs it worst.”

It took some effort on the part of the chairman to bring the meeting to order so that the hearing could be resumed.

Phillips went on with his story and told of spending the night with Tom Linton, then of his return to Sheep Camp to learn that he had been robbed of all his savings.  Corroboration of this misfortune he left to the oral testimony of the two brothers McCaskey and to the circumstantial evidence of Jim’s bandaged head.

While it seemed to him that he had given a simple, straightforward account of himself which would establish his innocence, so far, at least, as it applied to the theft of the sack of rice, he was uncomfortably aware that evidence of systematic pilfering had been introduced and that evidence he had not met except indirectly.  His proof seemed good so far as it went, but it did not go far, and he believed it all too likely that his hearers still considered him an accomplice, at the best.