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THAT ROYLE GIRL

"What were you doing with him? What did you intend to come out of your relation with him, if his wife lived?"

"I don't know."

"If his wife—died?"

"Oh, I don't know. I never thought of that, Mr. Elmen. I don't know."

"But, my dear girl, you must know what you thought then."

"I don't."

"You don't remember, you will say? No; that will not do. That will not do at all."

"I remember, Mr. Elmen. But what I remember is all sorts of things; I thought sometimes one thing and then another about Ket."

"What do you intend to tell upon the stand?"

"Why, the truth, Mr. Elmen, whatever they ask me. That's one thing I've learned out of this awful time, to tell the truth, first, last and all the time."

"But you can not possibly tell the truth on the witness stand, my dear young lady. You would be ridiculous before the end of the first hour of cross-examination; and Ketlar will certainly hang."

"Not if I stick to the truth!" Joan Daisy declared her newly formed faith.

"But you can not stick to the truth; no one can," Elmen explained patiently. "For the truth, as you have just said yourself, is never consistent. If you told the truth about what you thought of Ketlar and what you meant to do with him, you would tell sometimes one thing and sometimes another; and both would be true. That is why the truth will never do on the witness stand. For truth cares nothing whatever about consistency and courts care about nothing else. Remember you will be on the witness stand at least two days answering questions put by the prosecution for the sole purpose of making you