was heard as the judge read it. Many eyes were
wet: and the judge himself was visibly affected,
and pressed his handkerchief a moment to his eyes.
"These are the words of a Christian woman,
gentlemen," he said: and there was silence. A girl's
hand seemed to have risen from the grave to defend
her brother and rend the veil from falsehood.

Mr. Colt, out of pure tact, subdued his voice
to the key of the sentiment thus awakened, and
said impressively, " Gentlemen of the jury, that
is our case:" and so sat down.

CHAPTER LVI.

SERJEANT SAUNDERS thought it prudent to
let the emotion subside before opening the
defendant's case: so he disarranged his papers, and
then rearranged them as before; and, during
this, a person employed by Richard Hardie went
out and told him this last untoward piece of
evidence. He winced: but all was overbalanced by
this, that Skinner's evidence was now inadmissible
in the cause. He breathed more freely.

Serjeant Saunders rose with perfect dignity
and confidence, and delivered a masterly address.
In less than ten minutes the whole affair took
another colour under that plausible tongue.
The tactician began by declaring that the plaintiff
was perfectly sane, and his convalescence was
a matter of such joy to the defendant, that not
even the cruel misinterpretation of facts and motives,
to which his amiable client had been exposed,
could rob him of that sacred delight.
"Our case, gentlemen, is, that the plaintiff is
sane, and that he owes his sanity to those prompt,
wise, and benevolent measures, which we took
eighteen months ago, at an unhappy crisis of his
mind, to preserve his understanding and his property.
Yes, his property, gentlemen; that property
which, in a paroxysm of mania, he was
going to throw away, as I shall show you by an
unanswerable document. He comes here to
slander us and mulct us out of five thousand
pounds; but I shall show you he is already ten
thousand pounds the richer for that act of ours,
for which he debits us five thousand pounds, instead
of crediting us twice the sum. Gentlemen, I
cannot, like my learned friend, call witnesses from
the clouds, from the United States, and from the
grave; because it has not occurred to my client,
strong in the sense of his kindly and honourable
intentions, to engage gentlemen from foreign
parts, with woolly locks and nasal twangs, to drop
in accidentally, and eke out the fatal gaps in
evidence. The class of testimony we stand upon is
less romantic: it does not seduce the imagination
nor play upon the passions; but it is of a
much higher character in sober men's eyes,
especially in a court of law. I rely, not on witnesses
dropped from the clouds, and the stars, and the
stripes—to order; nor even on the prejudiced
statements of friends and sweethearts, who
always swear from the heart rather than from
the head and the conscience; but on the calm
testimony of indifferent men, and on written documents
furnished by the plaintiff, and on contemporaneous
entries in the books of the asylum,
which entries formally describe the plaintiff's
acts, and were put down at the time—at the,
time, gentlemen—with no idea of a trial at law
to come, but in compliance with the very proper
provisions of a wise and salutary Act. I shall
also lay before you the evidence of the medical
witnesses who signed the certificates, men of
probity and honour, and who have made these
subtle maladies of the mind the special study of
their whole life. I shall also call the family
doctor, who has known the plaintiff and his ailments,
bodily and mental, for many years, and
communicated his suspicions to one of the first
psychological physicians of the age, declining,
with a modesty which we, who know less of insanity
than he does, would do well to imitate—
declining, I say, to pronounce a positive opinion
unfavourable to the plaintiff, till he should have
compared notes with this learned man, and
profited by his vast experience."

In this strain he continued for a good hour,
until the defendant's case seemed to be a thing of
granite. His oration ended, he called a string
of witnesses: every one of whom bore the learned
counsel out by his evidence in chief.

But here came the grand distinction between
the defendant's case and the plaintiff's. Cross-
examination had hardly shaken the plaintiff's
witnesses: it literally dissolved the defendant's.
Osmond was called, and proved Alfred's headaches
and pallor, and his own suspicions. But
then Colt forced him to admit that many young
people had headaches without going mad, and
were pale when thwarted in love, without going
mad: and that as to the £14,000 and the phantom,
he knew nothing; but had taken all that for
granted on Mr. Richard Hardie's word.

Dr. Wycherley deposed to Alfred's being insane
and abnormally irritable, and under a
pecuniary illusion, as stated in his certificate:
and to his own vast experience. But the fire of
cross-examination melted all his polysyllables into
guess-work and hearsay. It melted out of him
that he, a stranger, had intruded on the young
man's privacy, and had burst into a most delicate
topic, his disagreement with his father, and so had
himself created the very irritation he had set
down to madness. He also had to admit that he
knew nothing about the £14,000 or the phantom,
but had taken for granted the young man's own
father, who consulted him, was not telling him a
deliberate and wicked falsehood.

Colt.—In short, sir, you were retained to make
the man out insane, just as my learned friend
there is retained.

Wycherley.—I think, sir, it would not be consistent
with the dignity of my profession to
notice that comparison.

Colt.—I leave defendant's counsel to thank you
for that. Come, never mind dignity; let us have a
little truth. Is it consistent with your dignity to
tell us whether the keepers of private asylums pay
you a commission for all the patients you consign
to durance vile by your certificates?