ommitted--to convince the jury
that the young man was insane, and that his form of insanity was
epilepsy, a disease which had prolonged lucid intervals.

A truly ingenious and eminently respectable defence, and one which, in
his heart of hearts, perhaps, Sir Herbert might not have been sorry to
see succeed, for he knew Sir James Penreath of Twelvetrees, and was
sorry to see his son in such a position. But he had his duty to perform,
and that duty was to discredit in the eyes of the jury the evidence of
the witness in the box, because juries were prone to look upon
specialists as men to whom all things had been revealed, and return a
verdict accordingly.

Sir Herbert made one mistake in his analysis of the defence. Sir Henry,
at least, believed in his own evidence and took himself very seriously
as a specialist. Like most stupid men who have got somewhere in
life, Sir Henry became self-assertive under the least semblance
of contradiction, and he grew violent and red-faced under
cross-examination. He would not hear of the possibility of a mistake in
his diagnosis of the accused's symptoms, but insisted that the accused,
when he saw him at the Durrington hotel, was suffering from an epileptic
seizure, combined with _furor epilepticus_, and was in a state of mind
which made him a menace to his fellow creatures. It was true he
qualified his statements with the words "so far as my observation goes,"
but the qualification was given in a manner which suggested to the jury
that five minutes of Sir Henry Durwood's observation were worth a
month's of a dozen ordinary medical men.

Sir Henry's vehement insistence on his infallibility struck Sir Herbert
as a flagrant violation of the rules of the game. He did not accept the
protestations as genuine; he thought Sir Henry was overdoing his part,
and playing to the gallery. He grew nettled in his turn, and, with a
sudden access of vigour in his tone, said:

"You told my learned friend that it is quite consistent with the
prisoner's malady that he could have committed the crime with which he
stands charged, and remember nothing about it afterwards. Is that a
fact?"

"Certainly."

"In that case, will you kindly explain how the prisoner came to leave
the inn hurriedly, before anybody was up, the morning after the murder
was committed? Why should he run away if he had no recollection of his
act?"

"I must object to my learned friend describing the accused's departure
from the inn