The solicitor did not frame his reply immediately, but a rush of blood to his complexion announced what its nature would have been. The fellow was really like a child in some things! How could he suppose that these outworn pleas that long ago had been worn threadbare by every country attorney could carry the least weight with men who bore sound heads on their shoulders? If he had nothing better on which to base his defence than the inadmissibility of circumstantial evidence, there was no need for him to go into court at all. He was declining to call the witnesses who would attempt to prove insanity; he was rejecting the one natural and reasonable line, which had the sanction of those who were older, wiser, altogether more capable than himself, in favor of a single desperate throw with the dice--and here was what that throw amounted to! “I must venture to say,” protested the solicitor, “you surprise one more and more. If you have nothing more original than that to show the jury, a weaker judge than Brudenell would demolish it in a few minds like a house of cards.” “We shall see.” “Why, my dear fellow, all the world knows there is no escape from circumstantial evidence in murder cases. Have you asked yourself the question how many verdicts could have been taken in recent years upon notorious crimes, had it been ruled out?” “I expect to have my own way of answering the question,” said the young man. “Yes, and Brudenell will have his.” “Quite probably, I grant you,” said the young man, with a tenacity that his companion felt to be exasperating; “but unless one is wholly deceived in the estimate of one’s own capacity--forgive this very unprofessional candor in regard to oneself--the jury will answer it in the fashion I ask them to, not in the fashion asked of them by Mr. Justice Brudenell and Mr. Horatio Weekes.” “Well, my young friend,” said Mr. Whitcomb, scrutinizing him with the patient wonder that is bestowed on a rare quadruped in a zoological gardens, “pray don’t think me impertinent if I confess that you are the most baffling compound I have ever encountered.” “Notably,” said Northcote, “of self-conceit, pig-headedness, childishness, ignorance, and effrontery. I dare say you are right, for have I not committed the unpardonable offence of assuming that I am wiser than Tobin, wiser than yourself, also of considering myself the superior of the judge upon the bench?” “You may be perfectly entitled to this self-estimate after the event,” said the solicitor, with a candor he was unable to repress; “but I would like to say that only a very complete, and even astonishing, success to-morrow can possibly justify it.”