As I saw District Attorney Fox about to enter upon this topic, I gathered myself together to meet the onslaught, for in this matter I could not be strictly truthful, since the least slip on my part might awaken the whole world to the fact that it could only have come there through the agency of Carmel herself.
What Mr.Moffat thought of it--what he hoped to prove in the prisoner's behalf by raking this subject over--it was left for me to discover later.

The prisoner was an innocent man, in his eyes.

I was not; and, while the time had not come for him to make this openly apparent, he was not above showing even now that the case contained a factor which weakened the prosecution--a factor totally dissociated with the openly accepted theory that the crime was simply the result of personal cupidity and drunken spite.
And in this he was right.

It did weaken it--weakened it to the point of collapse, if the counsel for the defence had fully acted up to his opportunity.

But something withheld him.