his head and snarled.
He was telling himself at the moment how quick may be the resolves
of the eager mind,--for he was convinced that the idea of attacking
Mr. Bonteen had occurred to Phineas Finn after he had displayed the
life-preserver at the club door; and he was telling himself also
how impossible it is for a dull conscientious man to give accurate
evidence as to what he had himself seen,--for he was convinced that
Lord Fawn had seen Phineas Finn in the street. But to no human being
had he expressed this opinion; nor would he express it,--unless his
client should be hung.

After lunch he occupied nearly three hours in giving to the jury,
and of course to the whole assembled Court, the details of about two
dozen cases, in which apparently strong circumstantial evidence had
been wrong in its tendency. In some of the cases quoted, the persons
tried had been acquitted; in some, convicted and afterwards pardoned;
in one pardoned after many years of punishment;--and in one the poor
victim had been hung. On this he insisted with a pathetic eloquence
which certainly would not have been expected from his appearance, and
spoke with tears in his eyes,--real unaffected tears,--of the misery
of those wretched jurymen who, in the performance of their duty, had
been led into so frightful an error. Through the whole of this long
recital he seemed to feel no fatigue, and when he had done with his
list of judicial mistakes about five o'clock in the afternoon, went
on to make what he called the very few remarks necessary as to the
evidence which on the next day he proposed to produce as to the
prisoner's character. He ventured to think that evidence as to the
character of such a nature,--so strong, so convincing, so complete,
and so free from all objection, had never yet been given in a
criminal court. At six o'clock he completed his speech, and it
was computed that the old man had been on his legs very nearly
seven hours. It was said of him afterwards that he was taken home
speechless by one of his daughters and immediately put to bed, that
he roused himself about eight and ate his dinner and drank a bottle
of port in his bedroom, that he then slept,--refusing to stir even
when he was waked, till half-past nine in the morning, and that then
he scrambled into his clothes, breakfasted, and got down to the Court
in half an hour. At ten o'clock he was in his place, and nobody knew
that he was any the worse for the previous day's exer