It was admitted by the prosecutor that he had sold 10,000 head of cattle during the last six years, and none had been rebranded to his knowledge.
What means had he of knowing whether these cattle that so much was said about had not been legally sold before?
It was a most monstrous thing that men like his clients--men who were an honour to the land they lived in--should be dragged up to the very centre of the continent upon a paltry charge like this--a charge which rested upon the flimsiest evidence it had ever been his good fortune to demolish.
With regard to the so-called imported bull the case against his clients was apparently stronger, but he placed no reliance upon the statements of the witnesses, who averred that they knew him so thoroughly that they could not be deceived in him.

He distrusted their evidence and believed the jury would distrust it too.

The brand was as different as possible from the brand seen to have been on the beast originally.

One short-horn was very like another.

He would not undertake to swear positively in any such case, and he implored the jury, as men of the world, as men of experience in all transactions relating to stock (here some of the people in the court grinned) to dismiss from their minds everything of the nature of prejudice, and looking solely at the miserable, incomplete, unsatisfactory nature of the evidence, to acquit the prisoners.
It sounded all very pleasant after everything before had been so rough on our feelings, and the jury looked as if they'd more than half made up their minds to let us off.
Then the judge put on his glasses and began to go all over the evidence, very grave and steady like, and read bits out of the notes which he'd taken very careful all the time.