ves are stirred with the wind.

"Silence in the court!" called out the crier.

And silence fell like a pall upon the crowd.

A door was opened on the left of the Judge's Bench, and the handsome
Highland girl was led in by a sheriff's officer. She was dressed in a
dark-blue merino suit, with a black felt hat and blue feather to match,
and dark-blue gloves. Her long light hair flowed down her shoulders, a
cataract of gold. She stepped with an elastic and imperial step as
natural to her as to the reindeer. A very Juno of stately beauty she
seemed as she rolled her large, fearless eyes over the crowded
court-room, until, at length, they fell on the form of the young Duke
of Hereward, seated on a front seat.

She started and flushed. Then recovered herself, caught his eyes, and
fixed them with her bold, steady gaze, smiled a vindictive, deadly smile,
and so passed with stately steps to her place on the witness stand.

CHAPTER XXIII.

A STARTLING CHARGE.

The Duke of Hereward was quite unable to account for the look of
vindictive and deadly hatred and malice cast on him by Rose Cameron. He
could only suppose that she mistook him for some one else, or that she
unreasonably resented his active share in the prosecution of the search
for the murderers of Sir Lemuel Levison.

He sat back in his seat and watched her while she stepped upon the
witness-stand and turned to face the jury.

Every pair of eyes in the court-room were also fixed upon her. For it was
believed that she had been an accomplice in the murder, as well as in the
robbery, at Castle Lone, and that she had turned Queen's evidence in
order to escape the extreme penalty of the law. And all there who looked
upon her were as much dazzled by her wondrous beauty, as appalled by her
awful guilt.

The Clerk of the Court administered the oath. The assistant Queen's
Counsel proceeded to examine her.

"Your name is Rose Cameron?"

"Na! I'm nae Rose Cameron. I'm Rose Scott, and an honest, married woman,"
said the witness, turning a baleful look upon the Duke of Hereward, and
letting her large, bold, blue eyes rove defiantly, triumphantly over the
sea of human faces turned toward her. She never blenched a bit under the
fire of glances fixed upon her. These glances would have pierced like
spears any finer and more sensitive spirit. They never seemed to touch
hers.

"What a handsome quean it is!" said some.

"What a diabolical malignity there is in her lo