Dr. Wycherley fenced with this question, but
the remorseless Colt only kept him longer under
torture, and dragged out of him that he received
fifteen per cent from the asylum keepers for
every patient he wrote insane; and that he had
an income of eight hundred pounds a year from
that source alone. This, of course, was the very
thing to prejudice a jury against the defence:
and Colt's art was to keep to their level.

Speers, cross-examined, failed to conceal that he
was a mere tool of Wycherley' s, and had signed
in manifest collusion, adhering to the letter of
the statute, but violating its spirit: for certainly,
the Act never intended by " separate examination,"
that two doctors should come into
the passage, and walk into the room alternately,
then reunite, and do the signing as agreed
before they ever saw the patient. As to the illusion
about the fourteen thousand pounds, Speers
owned that the plaintiff had not uttered a word
about the subject, but had peremptorily declined
it. He had to confess, too, that he had taken
for granted Dr. Wycherley was correctly informed
about the said illusion.

"In short," said the judge, interposing, " Dr.
Wycherley took the very thing for granted which
it was his duty to ascertain: and you, sir, not to be
behind Dr. Wycherley, took the thing for granted
at second hand." And when Speers had left the
box, he said to Serjeant Saunders, " If this case
is to be defended seriously, you had better call
Mr. Richard Hardie without further delay."

"It is my wish, my lud; but I am sorry to
say he is in the country very ill; and I have no
hope of seeing him here to-morrow."

"Oh, well; so that you do call him. I shall
not lay hearsay before the jury: hearsay gathered
from Mr. Richard Hardie—whom you will call in
person if the reports he has circulated have any
basis whatever in truth."

Mr. Saunders said coolly, "Mr. Richard
Hardie is not the defendant," and flowed on;
nor would any but a lawyer have suspected what a
terrible stab the judge had given him so quietly.

The surgeon of Silverton House was then
sworn, and produced the case book; and there
stood the entries which had been so fatal to
Alfred with the visiting justices. Suicide,
homicide, self-starvation. But the plaintiff got
to Mr. Colt with a piece of paper, on which he
had written his view of all this, and cross-examination
dissolved the suicide and homicide into
a spirited attempt to escape and resist a false
imprisonment. As for the self-starvation, Colt
elicited that Alfred had eaten at six o'clock
though not at two. " And pray, sir," said he,
contemptuously, to the witness, " do you never
stir out of a madhouse? Do you imagine that
gentlemen in their senses dine at two o'clock in
the nineteenth century?"

"No. I don't say that."

"What do you say, then? Is forcible imprisonment
of a bridegroom in a madhouse the
thing to give a gentleman a factitious appetite
at your barbarous dinner-hour?"

In a word, Colt was rough with this witness,
and nearly smashed him. Saunders fought
gallantly on, and put in Lawyer Crawford with his
draft of the insane deed, as he called it, by which
the erotic monomaniac Alfred divested himself
of all his money in favour of the Dodds. There
was no dissolving this deed away; and Crawford
swore he had entreated the plaintiff not to insist
on his drawing so unheard-of a document; but
opposition or question seemed to irritate his
client, so that he had complied, and the deed was
to have been signed on the wedding-day.

All the lawyers present thought this looked
really mad. Fancy a man signing away his property
to his wife's relatives!! The court, which
had already sat long beyond the usual time, broke
up, leaving the defendant with this advantage.
Alfred Hardie and his friends made a little knot
in the hall outside, and talked excitedly over the
incidents of the trial. Mr. Compton introduced
Fullalove and Vespasian. They all shook hands
with them, and thanked them warmly for the
timely and most unexpected aid. But Green and
a myrmidon broke in upon their conversation. " I
am down on Mr. Barkington, alias Noah Skinner.
It isn't very far from here, if you will follow me."
Green was as excited as a fox-hound when Pug
has begun to trail his brush: the more so that
another client of his wanted Noah Skinner; and
so the detective was doing a double stroke of
business. He led the way; it was dry, and they
all went in pairs after him into the back slums of
Westminster: and a pretty part that is.

Now as they went along Alfred hung behind
with Julia, and asked her what on earth she
meant by swearing that it was all over between
her and him. " Why your last letter was full of
love, dearest; what could you be thinking of to
say that?"

She shook her head sadly, and revealed to him
with many prayers for forgiveness that she had
been playing a part of late: that she had concealed
her father's death from him, and the fatal
barrier interposed. " I was afraid you would be
disheartened, and lose your first class and perhaps
your trial. But you are safe now, dear Alfred;
I am sure the judge sees through them; for I
have studied him for you. I know his face by
heart, and all his looks and what they mean. My
Alfred will be cleared of this wicked slander, and
happy with some one——Ah!"

"Yes, I mean to be happy with some one,"
said Alfred. " I am not one of your self-sacrificing
fools. You shall not sacrifice me to your
mother's injustice nor to the caprices of fate.
We love one another; but you would immolate
me for the pleasure of immolating yourself.
Don't provoke me, or I'll carry you off by force.
I swear it, by Him who made us both."

"Dearest, how wildly you talk." She hung her
head, and had a guilty thrill. She could not help
thinking that eccentric little measure would relieve
her of the sin of disobedience.

"I'll do it too," said he. " I'm not a man to
be beat."