"If we go over the story in our minds, we will see that under the conditions of these happenings he could not have witnesses. Therefore, if we wish to do justice, we must weigh his own story.
"Never mind the details now, but consider his attitude in telling it. For an entire session of the court he sat in the witness chair telling us with the most painstaking detail everything that happened from the time of his first arrival at Fort Enterprise up to his arrest.
"During the whole of the following day he was on the stand under a perfect fusillade of questions from my learned friend, admittedly the most brilliant cross-examiner at the bar. He did not succeed in shaking the prisoner's story in any important particular.
"How, I ask you, could the prisoner have foreseen and prepared for all those ingenious traps formulated in the resourceful brain of my learned friend, unless he was telling the simple truth?
"Moreover, the gaps, the inconsistencies, the improbabilities in the story which my friend has pointed out, to my mind these are the strongest evidences of its truth. For if he had made it all up he would be logical. Man's brain works that way.
"Suppose for the sake of argument that the prisoner did accomplish that miracle; that in his brain he formulated a story so complete in every ramification that nine hours' cross-examination could batter no holes in it.
"If that is true, it is a wonderful brain, isn't it? The prisoner, in short, is an amazingly clever young man. Now, can you imagine a man with even the rudiments of good sense persuading himself that he could make a successful Indian uprising at this date? There is a serious—"
Denholm was stopped by a commotion that arose outside the door of the court-room. There was a great throng in the corridor as well. He looked to the bench for aid.
His lordship rapped smartly with his gavel. "Silence!" he cried, "or I will have the room cleared!"
But the noise came nearer.