Except the squatters and overseers, the other people’s mostly a shady lot. Some’s run away from places that were too hot to hold ‘em. The women ain’t the men’s wives that they live with, but somebody else’s—who’s well rid of ‘em if all was known. There’s most likely a bit of horse and cattle stealing done on the quiet, and the publicans and storekeepers know who are their best customers, the square people or the cross ones. It ain’t so easy to get a regular up-and-down straight-ahead jury in a place of this sort. So Starlight and I knew that our chance was a lot better than if we’d been tried at Bargo or Sutton Forest, or any steady-going places of that sort.

If we’d made up our minds from the first that we were to get into it it wouldn’t have been so bad; we’d have known we had to bear it. Now we might get out of it, and what a thing it would be to feel free again, and walk about in the sun without anyone having the right to stop you. Almost, that is—there were other things against us; but there wasn’t so much of a chance of their turning up. This was the great stake. If we won we were as good as made. I felt ready to swear I’d go home and never touch a shilling that didn’t come honest again. If we lost it seemed as if everything was so much the worse, and blacker than it looked at first, just for this bit of hope and comfort.

After the bull had been sworn to by Mr. Hood and another witness, they brought up some more evidence, as they called it, about the other cattle we had sold in Adelaide. They had fetched some of the farmers up that had been at the sale. They swore straight enough to having bought cattle with certain brands from Starlight. They didn’t know, of course, at the time whose they were, but they could describe the brands fast enough. There was one fellow that couldn’t read nor write, but he remembered all the brands, about a dozen, in the pen of steers he bought, and described them one by. one. One brand, he said was like a long-handled shovel. It turned out to be—D. TD—Tom Dawson’s, of Mungeree. About a hundred of his were in the mob. They had drawn back for Mungeree, as it was nearly all frontage and cold in the winter. He was the worst witness for us of the lot, very near. He’d noticed everything and forgot nothing.

“Do you recognise either of the prisoners in the dock?” he was asked.

“Yes; both of ‘em,” says he. I wish I could have got at him.