said, "or he will do something rash. No, he
must and shall get his first class, and win his
trial; and then you know any lady will be too
proud to marry him; and, when he is married
and happy, you can tell him I did all I could for
him, and hunted up the witnesses, and was his
loving friend, though I could not—be—his—
wife."

She could not say this without crying; but
she said it for all that, and meant it too.

Besides helping Mr. Compton to get up the
evidence, this true and earnest friend and lover
had attended the court day after day, to watch
how things were done, and, woman-like, to see
what pleased and what displeased the court.
And so at last the court crier cried, with a
loud voice, "Hardie v. Hardie." Julia's eyes
roved very anxiously for Alfred, and up rose Mr.
Garrow, and stated to the court the substance
of the declaration; "to this," he said, "three
pleas have been pleaded: first, the plea of not
guilty, which is a formal plea; also another plea,
which has been demurred to, and struck off the
record; and, lastly, that at the time of the
alleged imprisonment the plaintiff was of unsound
mind, and a fit person to be confined;
which is the issue now to be tried."

Mr. Garrow then sat down, very tired of this
preliminary work, and wondering when he should
have the luck to conduct such a case as Hardie
v. Hardie; and leaned forward to be ready to
prompt his senior, a portly counsel, whom Mr.
Compton had retained because he was great at
addressing juries, and no point of law could now
arise in the case.

Colt, Q.C., rose like a tower, knowing very
little of the facts, and seeming to know everything.
He had a prodigious business, and was
rather indolent, and often skimmed his brief at
home, and then mastered it in court—if he got
time. Now, it is a good general's policy to open
a plaintiff's case warily, and reserve your
rhetoric for the reply; and Mr. Colt always
took this line when his manifold engagements
compelled him, as in Hardie v. Hardie, to teach
his case first and learn it afterwards. I will only
add, that in the course of his opening he was on
the edge of seven distinct blunders; but Garrow
watched him and always shot a whisper like a
bullet just in time. Colt took it, and glided
away from incipient error imperceptibly, and
with a tact you can have no conception of. The
jury did not detect the creaking of this machinery;
Serjeant Saunders did, and grinned satirically;
so did poor Julia, and her cheeks burned
and her eyes flashed indignant fire. And horror
of horrors, Alfred did not appear.

Mr. Colt's opening may be thus condensed:
The plaintiff was a young gentleman of great
promise and distinction, on whom, as usual in
these cases of false imprisonment, money was
settled. He was a distinguished student at Eton
and Oxford, and no doubt was ever expressed of
his sanity till he proposed to marry, and take his
money out of his trustees' hands by a marriage
settlement. On this his father, who up to
that time had managed his funds as principal
trustee, showed him great personal hostility for
some time, and looked out for a tool: that tool
he soon found in his brother, the defendant, a
person who, it would be proved, had actually not
seen the plaintiff for a year and a half, yet, with
great recklessness and inhumanity, had signed
away his liberty and his happiness behind his
back. Then tools of another kind—the kind that
anybody can buy, a couple of doctors—were, as
usual, easily found to sign the certificates. One
of these doctors had never seen him but for five
minutes, and signed in manifest collusion with
the other. They decoyed this poor young gentleman
away on his wedding morning—on his
wedding morning, gentlemen, mark that—and
consigned him to the worst of all dungeons.
What he suffered there he must himself relate to
you: for we, who have the happiness to walk
abroad in the air of reason and liberty, are little
able to realise the agony of mind endured by a
sane man confined among the insane. What we
undertake is to prove his sanity up to the very
hour of his incarceration; and also that he was
quite sane at the time when a brutal attempt
to recapture him by violence was made under the
defendant's order, and defeated by his own remarkable
intelligence and courage. Along with
the facts the true reason why he was imprisoned
will probably come out. But I am not bound
to prove sinister motives. It is for the defendant
to prove, if he can, that he had lawful motives
for a lawless act; and that he exercised due precaution,
and did not lend himself recklessly to the
dark designs of others. If he succeed in this,
that may go in mitigation of damages, though it
cannot affect the verdict. Our principal object is
the verdict, which will remove the foul aspersion
cast on my injured client, and restore him to
society. And to this verdict we are entitled,
unless the other side can prove the plaintiff was
insane. Call Alfred Hardie.

And with this he sat down.

An official called Alfred Hardie very loud; he
made no reply. Julia rose from her seat with
dismay painted on her countenance. Compton's,
Garrow's, and Colt's heads clashed together.

Mr. Colt jumped up again, and said, " My Lud,
I was not aware the gentleman they accuse of
insanity is just being examined for high honours
in the University of Oxford." Aside to Compton,
"And if he doesn't come, you may give them the
verdict."

"Well," said the judge, "I suppose he will be
here before you close your case."

On this the three heads clashed again, and
Serjeant Saunders, for the defendant, popped up,
and said with great politeness and affectation of
sympathy, " My Lud, I can quite understand my
learned friend's hesitation to produce his
principal witness."

"You understand nothing about the matter,"
said Colt cavalierly. "Call Mr. Harrington."

Mr. Harrington was Alfred's tutor at Eton,