nobody, perhaps, but a pining wife at home, or helpless children, or
an old mother? But who were their murderers? Where are they? God knows,
perhaps, but nobody else, and nobody ever will." The fact, he said, that
he was alleged to have walked up Cumberland Street on the Sunday morning
and looked in the direction of the Dewars' house was, unless the causes
of superstition and a vague and incomplete reasoning were to be accepted
as proof, evidence rather of his innocence than his guilt. He had
removed the soles of his boots, he said, in order to ease his feet in
walking; the outer soles had become worn and ragged, and in lumps under
his feet. He denied that he had told Bain, the detective, that he would
break out as a desperate tiger let loose on the community; what he had
said was that he was tired of living the life of a prairie dog or a
tiger in the jungle.

Butler was more successful when he came to deal with the bloodstains on
his clothes. These, he said, were caused by the blood from the scratches
on his hands, which had been observed at the time of his arrest. The
doctors had rejected this theory, and said that the spots of blood
had been impelled from the axe or from the heads of the victims as the
murderer struck the fatal blow. Butler put on the clothes in court, and
was successful in showing that the position and appearance of certain
of the blood spots was not compatible with such a theory. "I think,"
he said, "I am fairly warranted in saying that the evidence of these
gentlemen is, not to put too fine a point on it, worth just nothing at
all."

Butler's concluding words to the jury were brief but emphatic: "I stand
in a terrible position. So do you. See that in your way of disposing of
me you deliver yourselves of your responsibilities."

In the exercise of his forbearance towards an undefended prisoner, Mr.
Haggitt did not address the jury for the Crown. At four o'clock the
judge commenced his summing-up. Mr. Justice Williams impressed on
the jury that they must be satisfied, before they could convict the
prisoner, that the circumstances of the crime and the prisoner's conduct
were inconsistent with any other reasonable hypothesis than his guilt.
There was little or no evidence that robbery was the motive of the
crime. The circumstance of the prisoner being out all Saturday night and
in the neighbourhood of the crime on Sunday morning only amounted to
the fact that he had an opportunity shared by a great