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216
THE LAW-BRINGERS

this.He spoke of Jennifer's unswerving loyalty in word and deed to her husband, and suggested that it had proved itself by the fact that she dared something in destroying his papers by his order.

"You believe that it was done at his order?"

"Certainly. When I stopped the work half done, she said, 'What is the use of it now? Oh, what will Harry say?’"

The counsel for the prosecution suggested that Jennifer was personally implicated.

"It is well known that she did not love her husband and that she had reason to fear him. Even supposing that he forced her into helping him to escape, is it likely that she would make away with evidence which, in the event of his recapture, would save her from his persecutions?"

"She never forgot the duty she owed him as her husband," said Tempest.

A few more leading questions were quietly parried, and then Tempest gave place to Hinds, who told of the search in Quatre Fourches; the finding of the cache and the impossibility of extracting information from either Jennifer or Robison. He had not been able to follow up the Indians; but Forsyth had done so later, and three of them were now in court. They were called; but either they were ignorant of the affair or Robison's threats had been effectual. They had left the two white men and the white woman on shore up the Channel, and, after taking a few photographs, the three had gone into the woods. Some hours later Mrs. Ducane had returned with Robison who told them that Ducane was following in another canoe. They never saw anything of that canoe, and on their return to their people they neither heard nor saw anything of a white man. They did not know any more.

Forsyth was next called. His evidence asserted that Dick had come to Chipewyan ostensibly to arrest Robison for murder, but that he had refused to do so at once on the ground that he wished to implicate Ducane on another matter first. He could not say that Dick had any other motive in leaving the man at liberty. He could not say that Dick had any but the alleged reason for taking himself to Lobstick Island. He did not see why the Indians should deny