As Euphemia and Crinkett's allegations develop into a criminal prosecution John is arrested for bigamy and imprisoned, while Hester continues to believe in his innocence despite the pressure of her family and returns to stand beside him, yet testimony and documentary evidence said to prove an Australian marriage weigh heavily against him at trial and the jury ultimately finds him guilty, sending him to prison, until after the verdict the telegraph clerk Bagwax notices a crucial inconsistency involving the postal evidence on which part of the prosecution depended and raises the first serious possibility that the apparently decisive case against John may have been constructed on false evidence.