"You swear to that?"
"I do."
It was perjury, of course. Yet if a girl may not perjure herself like a lady for the man she loves things have come to a pretty pass. That idea apparently struck Peacock.
"Prior to the defendant's marriage you were engaged to him, were you not?"
"I was."
"Are you engaged to him now?"
Very prettily and gracefully, without embarrassment, rather with pride, Sylvia answered: "I am."
"That's all," said Peacock. "The State rests." But as he said it he looked at the jury and sighed, sighed audibly, much as were he adding, "You may judge the value of her testimony from that."
The resting, however, was but figurative. In a moment the summing up began, a summing which, at first passionless as algebra, dealt with technical points.
"Gentlemen," said Peacock turning again to the jury, "the evidence in this case is of the kind known to you perhaps as circumstantial. Evidence of this nature can lead and often does lead to a conclusion more satisfactory than direct evidence can produce. Circumstances cannot lie any more than facts can. Unless we resort to them it is in vain that we attempt to detect and to punish crime. Crime shuns the light of day. It seeks darkness. It courts secrecy. The assassin moves stealthily. He calls no witness to see him shoot his victim down. If you wait for an eye-witness you grant impunity to crime. It is true, and probably you will be so told by counsel for the defense, that there are cases in which the innocent have been convicted. Yet if men have been erroneously convicted on circumstantial evidence, so have they been convicted on direct testimony also. That is not, though, a reason for declining to accept such testimony. The possibility of error exists alike. But because men may err do they refuse to act? Because wheat may be blighted does the farmer refuse to sow? No, gentlemen. Until we have means of knowledge beyond our present faculties we must accept this kind of evidence or grant practical immunity to crime."