The bailies and the murdered man's servants, even the dominie and his daughter could tell but one tale.

"Peter Fae had declared with his last breath that John Sabay had stabbed him." The prosecution also brought forward strong evidence to show that very bitter words had passed, a few days before the murder, between the prisoner and the murdered man.
In the sifting of this evidence other points were brought out, still more convincing.

Hacon Flett said that he was walking to Stromness by the beach to meet his sweetheart, when he heard the cry of murder, and in the gloaming light saw John Sabay distinctly running across the moor.

When asked how he knew certainly that it was John, he said that he knew him by his peculiar dress, its bright buttons, and the glimmer of gold braid on his cap.

He said also, in a very decided manner, that John Sabay passed Ragon Torr so closely that he supposed they had spoken.
Then Ragon being put upon his oath, and asked solemnly to declare who was the man that had thus passed him, tremblingly answered, "_John Sabay!_" John gave him such a look as might well haunt a guilty soul through all eternity; and old Dame Alison, roused by a sense of intolerable wrong, cried out, "Know this, there's a day coming that will show the black heart; but traitors' words ne'er yet hurt the honest cause." "Peace, woman!" said an officer of the court, not unkindly.
"Weel, then, God speak for me! an' my thoughts are free; if I daurna say, I may think." In defence Margaret Fae swore that she had been with John on Brogar Bridge until nearly time to meet her father, and that John then wore a black broadcloth suit and a high hat; furthermore, that she believed it utterly impossible for him to have gone home, changed his clothes, and then reached the scene of the murder at the time Hacon Flett and Ragon Torr swore to his appearance there.
But watches were very uncommon then; no one of the witnesses had any very distinct idea of the time; some of them varied as much as an hour in their estimate.