ering tone,
"just tell me how you can _prove_ that I ever tried to murder you?
Pooh! it's easy enough to talk about tents; and knives, and such things,
but how can you prove it that I ever tried to murder you? a likely
thing, indeed."

"Prove it!" exclaimed Jacob, evidently a little at fault.

"Yes, prove it. Do you think I'm going to have my character sworn away
on such unsubstantial hallucinations? Tell me, first, what time of the
day did it happen?"

"It didn't happen in the day at all, as you know well enough."

"Was it dark?"

"Yes."

"Could you see who it was as tried to murder you, as you say?"

"No."

"Then how do you know it was me?"

"I hit the scoundrel with my spade," said Jacob, indignantly, "and made
him sing out, and I knowed it were your voice; I should have knowed it
among a thousand."

"And that's all your proof," said the other, sneeringly. "You knowed my
voice."

"Ay," replied Jacob; "and I left my mark on you too. There's a scar on
your hand. I haven't a doubt that's it."

"Can you prove it?" asked the other, triumphantly. "A scar, indeed! Do
you think scars are such uncommon things with men as works hard at the
diggings, that you can swear to one scar? A precious likely story!"

"Ah, but I saw you myself."

"When?"

"At two of the preachings."

"Preachings! and what then? I didn't try and murder you at the
preachings, did I? But are you sure it was me, after all, as you saw at
the preachings?"

"Quite."

"How was I dressed? Was the person you took for me just the same as me?
Had he the same coloured hair--smooth face, like me?"

"I'll tell you plain truth," said Jacob, warmly; "it were you. I'm as
sure as I'm here it were you; but you'd blacked your sandy hair, and
growed a beard on your lip."

"Well, I never!" cried the other, in a heat of virtuous indignation.
"Here's a man as wants to make out I tried to murder him; but when I
asks him to prove it, all he says is, he couldn't see me do it, that he
heard my voice, that I've got a scar on my hand, that he saw me twice at
some preachings, but it wasn't me neither; it wasn't my hair, it wasn't
my beard, and yet he's sure it was me. Here's pretty sort of evidence
to swear away a man's life on. Why, I wonder, young man, you ain't
ashamed to look me in the face after such a string of tergiversations."

"I think, Jacob," said his master, "you'd better say no more about it.
It's plain you've no legal proof agai