of the unfortunate prisoner to recover the treasure, and offered him half
the gold as a reward. The prisoner was tempted and he fell. His action
towards the boy at the Piper Mine was taken merely to induce him to
disclose the whereabouts of the lost booty, and the shooting at Trooper
Casey was an accident. Rogers had acted on blind and unreasoning impulse
in snatching up the gun on the approach of the police, believing his
complicity with Shine in the effort to recover the hidden loot had come
to light, and the discharge of the weapon was purely involuntary.

To give an air of plausibility to this plea it was necessary to represent
Ephraim Shine in the worst possible light, and that conscientious and
hard-working young lawyer spared no pains on his own part or the part of
the dead man's daughter to make every point that would tell for his
client; but Chris was not more moved than at the preliminary
investigation. She told the truth simply, and no effort on the part of
the barrister could shake her evidence or break through the unnatural
calm in which she appeared to have enveloped herself. Harry saw her
several times during the course of the trial, and found a desolate
anguish in her white immobile face, that stirred up in his heart again a
fury against fate, the law, and every force and condition that added the
smallest pang to her sorrow. If he could have only interposed his body
between her and all this trouble it would have been keen joy to him to
have felt raining upon his flesh, with heavy material blows, the shafts
directed against her tender heart; but his strength was of no avail, he
could think of nothing that he might do but take that insolent lawyer by
the throat and choke him on the floor of the Court. He was helpless to do
any thing but love her, and every sight of her, every thought of her,
added fuel to his passion.

She went to him once outside the Court with out stretched hands and