Lambert in the Dock.

When the rôles of accuser and accused were reversed, and Lambert after two abortive prosecutions had in 1895 to start his trial for perjury, Meikle's case against him was one of remarkable cogency. Lambert still remained without any direction corroboration of the alleged incidents of the 17th October the chief item of indirect corroboration was turned against him and Meikle received an immense reinforcement in other ways. His son, it is true, had died while he himself was in gaol but on the other hand he and his wife were able to testify for the first time. Meikle himself was under examination for about seven hours, during which he was not shaken in a single material particular. The conversations in which Lambert had said that he and another had been offered £50 to put sheep and skins on Meikle's land in order to get him into trouble, but that he would befriend Meikle and defeat the plot; the communication by Meikle to the police of the proposed trap with request for protection; the fact that when Lambert called on the night before the police entered he had a bag with him which when questioned he alleged to contain blankets, and which, according to Meikle, was just of a size to hold two sheepskins; the regular locking of the outhouses in consequence of Lambert first warning, and the failure to lock the smithy door that night because the key was missing after it had been used to admit Lambert—these points were now put with clearness, and some of them for the first time, before the Court. It was also proved that young Arthur Meikle, who had always been sickly lad, was so ill with pleurisy on the night of the alleged crime that he kept his bed, and it was doubtful whether he would ever get up again.

Lambert's Need for Mats.

But the most remarkable of the new testimony was entirely independent of the Meikle household. William McGeorge, carter, who had shared Lambert's hut on the Company's land had left for another station on the morning of the 17th October and was not produced at the trial of Meikle. But in 1895 McGeorge appeared on Meikle's subpoena to give the most dramatic evidence of the new trial.

"Before I left," he said, "maybe a week or a fortnight, Lambert said he wanted a couple of sheepskins formats. I left the two skins hanging on the wire fence alongside of Lambert's hut. . . . I couldn't be sure if they hanging on the fence when I left on the Monday."—(P. 39)

This evidence was supplemented by that of two experts—Thomas Westacote, a butcher, and Alexander Grieve, a station manager. Both of these witnesses independently saw the two skins earing the Company's brand which were produced before the Justices on the preliminary enquiry in 1887; and each of them swore that these skins had marks on them which meant that they had been dried on a wire. (P. 41.)^* It is hardly necessary to add that if the skins had been taken by Meikle sheep which he had killed himself, and placed in the bundle where they were found by the police, they would have borne no wire-marks; whereas the two skins which McGeorge swore that he had left hanging on the wire fence would have acquired exactly this appearance in the course of a week or two.

An Alibi for Lambert.

McGeorge was also a link in a chain of four witnesses (Barclay, Fraser, Waddell, and McGeorge), who between them proved conclusively that on the night of the 17th October Lambert was in a hotel at Mataura between 8 and 9 o'clock. Yet Lambert had sworn to having seen the sheep stolen twelve or fourteen miles away between 9 and 10 that evening, after first visiting Meikle's house and Gregg's, which were respectively a mile and half-a-mile away from the supposed scene of the crime. It is impossible to detail here the convincing proof of this most remarkable alibi; but a perusal of the evidence (P.38-40) will suffice to satisfy most unbiassed readers that the alibi was both honest and accurate, since what any one witness deposed to is of very slight value standing alone, and only gains importance when pieced together with the similar testimonies of all the others. Concoction and fabrication are accustomed to proceed by less remote and circuitous methods.

Smudging the Date.

Lumbert's story remained substantially as before, except that he now endeavoured to prove that he had not fixed the time on the 17th October, but only "on or about the 17th "—a vagueness for which there was not an atom of evidence except own statement, and which was flatly contradicted by the Registrar of the Supreme Court, the foreman of the jury, and her unimpeachable witnesses. Whether the correct date was the 17th October, or on or about the 17th, there was definite perjury here; he had sworn positively to the 17th to convict Meikle, and began to smudge in order to acquit himself. But as to the substance of his charge against Meikle, Mr. Justice Williams was careful to point out to the jury that it was not to page 18 be treated as perjured because of an innocent error in the date:—

"As to the question of date he (His Honour) could not very well see any very great importance in it. It had been said that if Lambert swore positively in 1887 that it was the 17th October on which the thing happened, and it was not so-therefore Lambert would have committed perjury. But that was not the case. If Lambert swore wrongfully as to the date, but rightly to the sheep having been removed, it would be absurd to suggest that fixing the date wrongfully was other than a mistake if it was true that on some date or other about that time he saw Arthur Meikle drive the sheep. (P. 48.)

But the advantage of this broad and generous ruling was quite insufficient for Lambert's protection.

Another Very Big One.

There were no less than ten witnesses contradicting him on one point or another; he was to a very serious extent, in conflict with himself; and to the old improbabilities and number of minor discrepancies was added the astounding story that Meikle after being committed for trial had written Lambert a letter offering Him £1000 to keep his mouth shut. That so astute a man as Meikle should have put his neck into the noose by writing so idiotic a letter was as incredible as that so astute a man as Lambert should release him and jeoparding his own £50 by losing the letter. It was stated by Lambert that he got the letter from Troup, and by Mrs. Lambert she handed it back to Troup after reading it—(P. 45 and47) and as the subject will not be worth recurring to, it may be a well to add here that Troup informed the Commission that he was almost certain he never received it, and absolutely certain that he never saw it. (C. 181/768, 183/803-5). Though Troup's contradiction was not before the jury in 1895, was ample to satisfy them that Lambert's story about the let was another colossal addition to his mountain of lying. To crown everything came the complete reversal of the one extrinsic circumstance which corroborated Lambert and damned Meikle eight years before. If in 1887 the presence of the Company's sheepskins in Meikle's smithy had proved fatal to Meikle as the man who had put them there, the jury in 1895 must have been equally confident, after listening to the evidence of McGeorge, Westacote, and Grieve, that the skins were put there by Lambert himself. Lambert's "plant" had at last exposed in its true colours; and the result was a verdict of "Guilty" and the longest sentence which the law then allowed for perjury.