Mr.Pettifer had read the evidence with an accurate discrimination.

The plea of self-defence was here foreshadowed and it was just the certainty that the defence was going to rely upon it for a verdict which had brought Henry Thresk himself into the witness-box at Bombay.

Given all that was known of Stephen Ballantyne and of the life he had led his unhappy wife, the defence would have been a good one, but for a single fact--the discovery of Ballantyne's body outside the tent.

No plea of self-defence could safely be left to cover that.

Thresk himself wondered at it.