had arrived--repeating them to
himself. When we got to a station he threw away his paper, after
tearing it up, and when we started commenced again, but at every
stoppage on our journey he increased his amount. After we had
travelled 250 miles, the property he was valuing had attained the
handsome figure of L100,000.

He evidently had not observed me. I was very quiet, and well wrapped
up. The next day, when he stepped into the witness-box he had not the
least idea that I had been his fellow-traveller of the previous
night. He was not very sharp except in the matter of figures; but his
opinion, like that of all experts, was invincible. His name was Bunce.

"When did you view this property, Mr. Bunce? I understand you come
from London."

"I saw it this morning, sir."

"Did you make any calculation as to its value _before_ you saw it?"

This puzzled him, and he stared at me. It was a hard stare, but I held
out.

He said, "No."

"Not when you were travelling? Did it not pass through your mind
when you were in the train, for instance--'I wonder, now, what that
property is worth?'"

"I dare say it did, sir."

"But don't _dare say_ anything unless it's true."

"I did, then, run it over in my mind."

"And I dare say you made notes and can produce them. Did you make
notes?" After a while I said, "I see you did. You may as well let me
have them."

"I tore them up."

"Why? What became of the pieces?"

"I threw them away."

"Do you remember what price you had arrived at when you reached
Peterborough, for instance?"

The expert thought I was some one whom we never mention except when in
a bad temper, and he was more and more puzzled when he found that at
every stoppage I knew how much his price had increased.

As the case was tried by an arbitrator and not a jury, my task was
easy, arbitrators not being so likely to be befooled as the other form
of tribunal. This arbitrator, especially, knew the elasticity of an
expert's opinion, and therefore I was not alarmed for my client. The
amount was soon arrived at by reducing the sum claimed by no less
than L90,000. Thus vanished the visionary claim and the expert. He
evidently had not been trained by the cunning old surveyor whose
experience taught him to be moderate, and ask only twice as much as
you ought to get.

In another claim, which was no less than L10,000, the jury gave L300.
This was a state of things that had to be stopped, and it could only
be accomp