my
client with the man in the street, he really meant that he thought
that there must be identity, because he believed from other reasons
that Mr. Finn was the man in the street. Mr. Bonteen had been
murdered;--according to Lord Fawn's thinking had probably been
murdered by Mr. Finn. And it was also probable to him that Mr.
Bonteen had been murdered by the man in the street. He came thus to
the conclusion that the prisoner was the man in the street. In fact,
as far as the process of identifying is concerned, his lordship's
evidence is altogether in favour of the prisoner. The figure seen by
him we must suppose was the figure of a short man, and not of one
tall and commanding in his presence, as is that of the prisoner."

There were many other points on which Mr. Chaffanbrass insisted at
great length;--but, chiefly, perhaps, on the improbability, he might
say impossibility, that the plot for a murder so contrived should
have entered into a man's head, have been completed and executed, all
within a few minutes. "But under no hypothesis compatible with the
allegations of the prosecution can it be conceived that the murder
should have been contemplated by my client before the quarrel at the
club. No, gentlemen;--the murderer had been at his work for days. He
had examined the spot and measured the distances. He had dogged the
steps of his victim on previous nights. In the shade of some dark
doorway he had watched him from his club, and had hurried by his
secret path to the spot which he had appointed for the deed. Can any
man doubt that the murder has thus been committed, let who will have
been the murderer? But, if so, then my client could not have done
the deed." Much had been made of the words spoken at the club door.
Was it probable,--was it possible,--that a man intending to commit
a murder should declare how easily he could do it, and display the
weapon he intended to use? The evidence given as to that part of the
night's work was, he contended, altogether in the prisoner's favour.
Then he spoke of the life-preserver, and gave a rather long account
of the manner in which Phineas Finn had once taken two garotters
prisoner in the street. All this lasted till the great men on the
bench trooped out to lunch. And then Mr. Chaffanbrass, who had been
speaking for nearly four hours, retired to a small room and there
drank a pint of port wine. While he was doing so, Mr. Serjeant
Birdbolt spoke a word to him, but he only shook