“Not till we got here this morning from Paterson. No, Judge.”
“H’m! You were not here on the twenty-seventh of July? You are certain of that?”
“Certain sure, Judge!” declared Gates. “We wouldn’t be likely to forget if we had. This is our home town. We was kind of ashamed to come back, right off, after they turned us loose from the hoosgow. So we——”
“You have not been in or near Boone Lake since you were released from prison—until to-day?” insisted Hammerton.
“No, Your Honour, we ain’t. And we c’n prove it. We went straight to Paterson; and there we——”
“Then,” spoke up Ruth, coming forward, “how did two reputable witnesses happen to see you at Mr. Michael Trent’s farm late on the afternoon of July twenty-seventh?”
Hegan gulped. Gates, however, answered suavely:
“Flash your witnesses on us, ma’am. If they seen us here or in this county that day they sure got good eyes. They——”
“Yep!” supplemented Hegan. “Who’s your witnesses? Who are they?”
Hammerton and Saunders were looking at the troubled girl in surprise. With true feminine quibble for truth, she had put the statement in the form of a query in speaking of the witnesses whose identity she had just invented. The failure of her ruse distressed her keenly, even while the memory of Hegan’s start and his scared gulp made her doubly certain she was on the right track.