"If the prisoners are innocent some one else has committed the crime.

Five persons do not come to a place as if by enchantment, obtain five horses shod precisely like those of the accused, imitate the appearance of some of them, and put Malin apparently underground for the sole purpose of casting suspicion on Michu and the four gentlemen.

The unknown guilty parties must have had some strong reason for wearing the skin, as it were, of five innocent men.

To discover them, even to get upon their traces, we need as much power as the government itself, as many agents and as many eyes as there are townships in a radius of fifty miles." "The thing is impossible," said Bordin.

"There's no use thinking of it.
Since society invented law it has never found a way to give an innocent prisoner an equal chance against a magistrate who is pre-disposed against him.