poke with a hard dignity, the lady, and a great effect of doing
business, a kind of assertion of the legitimate. The farmers of Fox
County told each other in chapfallen appreciation that she was about as
level-headed as they make them. Lawyer Cruickshank, as they called him,
brought forth from her detail after detail, and every detail fitted
damningly with the last. The effect upon young Ormiston was so painful
that many looked another way. His jaw was set and his features
contorted to hold himself from the disgrace of tears. He was generally
acknowledged to be overwhelmed by the unexpected demonstration of his
guilt, but distress was so plain in him that there was not a soul in
the place that was not sorry for him. In one or two resolute faces hope
still glimmered, but it hardly survived the cross-examination of the
Crown's chief witness by the counsel for the defence which, as far as
it went, had a perfunctory air and contributed little to the evidence
before the Court. It did not go all the way, however. The case having
opened late, the defence was reserved till the following day, when
proceedings would be resumed with the further cross-examination of Miss
Belton.

As the defendant's counsel went down the courthouse steps Rawlins came
up to him to take note of his demeanour and anything else that might be
going.

"Pretty stiff row to hoe you've got there, Lorne," he said.

"Pretty stiff," responded Lorne.

CHAPTER XI

Imagination, one gathers, is a quality dispensed with of necessity in
the practice of most professions, being that of which nature is, for
some reason, most niggardly. There is no such thing as passing in
imagination for any department of public usefulness, even the government
of Oriental races; the list of the known qualified would be exhausted,
perhaps, in getting the papers set. Yet neither poet nor philosopher
enjoys it in monopoly; the chemist may have it, and the inventor must;
it has been proved the mainspring of the mathematician, and I have
hinted it the property of at least two of the Murchisons. Lorne was
indebted to it certainly for his constructive view of his client's
situation, the view which came to him and stayed with him like a chapter
in a novel, from the hour in which Ormiston had reluctantly accounted
for himself upon the night of the burglary. It was a brilliant view,
that perceived the young clerk the victim of the conspiracy he was
charged with furthering; its justifi