m revelations which would
attack the honour, if not the life, of a young and beautiful sister, sole
remnant of a family eminent in station, and in all those moral and civic
attributes which make for the honour of a town and lend distinction to
its history.

"Fear for a loved one, even in one whom you will probably hear described
as a dissipated man, of selfish tendencies and hitherto unbrotherly
qualities, is a great miracle-worker. No sacrifice seems impossible which
serves as a guard for one so situated and so threatened.

"Let us review his history. Let us disentangle, if we can, our knowledge
of what occurred in the clubhouse, from his knowledge of it at the time
he showed these unexpected traits of self-control and brotherly anxiety,
which you will yet hear so severely scored by my able opponent. His was a
nature in which honourable instincts had forever battled with the secret
predilections of youth for independence and free living. He rebelled at
all monition; but this did not make him altogether insensible to the
secret ties of kinship, or the claims upon his protection of two highly
gifted sisters. Consciously or unconsciously, he kept watch upon the two;
and when he saw that an extraneous influence was undermining their mutual
confidence, he rebelled in his heart, whatever restraint he may have put
upon his tongue and actions. Then came an evening, when, with heart
already rasped by a personal humiliation, he saw a letter passed. You
have heard the letter and listened to its answer; but he knew nothing
beyond the fact--a fact which soon received a terrible significance from
the events which so speedily followed."

Here Mr. Moffat recapitulated those events, but always from the
standpoint of the defendant--a standpoint which necessarily brought
before the jury the many excellent reasons which his client had for
supposing this crime to have resulted solely from the conflicting
interests represented by that furtively passed note, and the visit of two
girls instead of one to The Whispering Pines. It was very convincing,
especially his picture of Arthur's impulsive flight from the club-house
at the first sound of his sisters' voices.

"The learned counsel for the people may call this unnatural," he cried.
"He may say that no brother would leave the place under such
circumstances, whether sober or not sober, alive to duty or dead to
it--that curiosity would hold him there, if nothing else. But he forgets,
if thu