Every one connected with the case sat up. Denholm's eye brightened.
"Please go on," he said and sat down.
Colina, in a low, steady voice, commenced her story at the point where
Ambrose had asked her to find some one to go in search of Nesis.
While she spoke her grave eyes were brooding over the prisoner's bent, dark head below. He dared not look at her. The court-room was so still that when she paused for a word one could hear the clock on the wall tick.
She told of her journey to the Kakisa River; her interview with Sergeant Plaskett (which provoked a smile); her search among the teepees; her encounter with Marya, and all that followed on that.
Without a trace of self-consciousness she told how she and Cora had set off at night on the unknown trail, and how she had ridden into the middle of the hostile village next day and demanded Nesis.
"Two girls to defy a whole tribe of redskins!"—the thought could be read in the jurymen's startled eyes.
The twelve men hung out of the box, listening with parted lips. All that had gone before in this startling trial was nothing to Colina's story.
When Colina came to her meeting with Nesis her brave port was shaken. Her voice began to tremble. She could not bring herself to name the dreadful thing. The judge, perceiving a stoppage in her story, interrupted her.
"Miss Gaviller, if the girl could understand you, why did she answer by signs?"