"Take your time," said the District Attorney, impressively. "This is a very important point."
And then there was again a long silence. In the midst of it the sun, bursting through a gray mass of clouds, touched Elizabeth's hair with a wave of light. It stood out, a shining halo, against the rim of her black hat. The witness stared at it as if fascinated. Then he uttered a sound—it might almost have been a sob—of relief.
"That is not the same woman," he said. "The hair is quite different! That other woman's hair was a much deeper red—it didn't shine and glisten. And her whole air, the way she held herself was different. I am sure it is not the same."
And this opinion, once announced, he clung to tenaciously—nothing the District Attorney said could shake it. Mr. Fenton would not even cross-examine, and there was great rejoicing in the ranks of the defense.
But the next day the prosecution placed upon the stand a druggist's clerk, who remembered having sold a bottle of arsenic to a woman dressed in black on the morning of the twenty-third of December. The occurrence was impressed on his mind because he had demurred as to selling poison, and she had presented a physician's certificate. She was handsomely dressed and seemed like a lady; he had noticed particularly that her hair was reddish. And when asked to identify Elizabeth, he swore unhesitatingly that she was the same woman.
Upon Mr. Fenton's cross-examination, it became evident what important questions may hang on the color of a woman's hair.
Mr. Fenton: "You said, did you not, that the woman's hair was red?"
Witness, cautiously: "I said, reddish. That's not quite the same thing."
Mr. Fenton: "Explain the difference."
Witness, confused: "Well, I—I don't know. I meant to say it was sort of—sort of light"——