r voice. I saw how
desperation at what she had done when she thought her love was cured was
now bracing the woman to this audacity.

"Remember," said Rocklin, "the gold was also found as the direct result
of your information. It was you who told Major Pidcock in the ambulance
about the seven sacks."

"I never said anything about seven sacks."

This falsehood was a master-stroke, for only half a sack had been found.
She had not written this down. There was only the word of Pidcock and me
to vouch for it, while against us stood her denial, and the actual
quantity of gold.

"I have no further questions," said Rocklin.

"But I have," said Jenks. And then he made the most of Mrs. Sproud,
although many in the room were laughing, and she herself, I think, felt
she had done little but sacrifice her own character without repairing
the injury she had done black curly. Jenks made her repeat that she was
frightened; not calm enough to be sure of voices, especially many
speaking together; that she had seen no one throughout. He even
attempted to show that the talk about the hay-stack might have been
purely about hay, and that the half-sack of gold might have been put
there at another time--might belong to some honest man this very moment.

"Did you ever know the young man who boarded with you to do a
dishonorable thing?" inquired Jenks. "Did you not have the highest
opinion of him?"

She had not expected a question like this. It nearly broke the woman
down. She put her hand to her breast, and seemed afraid to trust her
voice. "I have the highest opinion of him," she said, word painfully
following word. "He--he used to know that."

"I have finished," said Jenks.

"Can I go?" asked the witness, and the attorneys bowed. She stood one
hesitating moment in the witness-stand, and she looked at the jury and
the court; then, as if almost in dread, she let her eyes travel to black
curly. But his eyes were sullenly averted. Then Mrs. Sproud slowly made
her way through the room, with one of the saddest faces I have ever
seen, and the door closed behind her.

We finished our case with all the prisoners identified, and some of them
doubly. The defence was scarcely more than a sham. The flimsy alibis
were destroyed even by the incompetent, unready Rocklin, and when the
charge came blackness fell upon the citizens of Tucson. The judge's cold
statements struck them as partisan, and they murmured and looked darkly
at him. But the jury,