“Proof! Does anybody want proof that she is blackhearted, treacherous, lying, cowardly, a secret murderer?” raved the girl. “Yes, a murderer! She wanted me to commit murder,—to let a sweet young creature starve on her sick-bed, and tried to bribe me with that very ear-ring. And now she says I stole it.”
“Have you any proof of this?”
“Proof! Proof again! What proof is there, but her word, that I took the ear-ring!” said Jane, with quick shrewdness, a thing she was not deficient in, when rage did not overmaster her entirely. “My word ought to be as good as hers. She says I stole the ring, and I say she gave it to me; what proof has she that her story is a bit truer than mine?”
“She swears to it.”
“I’ll swear to mine.”
“That the law does not allow. An accused person cannot be a witness in his or her own behalf.”
“But the accuser may be a witness for her side.”
“No. It is the Commonwealth that prosecutes, and the accuser is only a witness for the State.”
Jane broke forth indignantly—“You dare to call this justice! Such pitiful stuff you name ‘the wisdom of the law!’”
She spoke these last words with bitter scorn. “If some one would come, and swear that you, the judge, had stolen, you’d have to believe ’em, ha! ha!”