The consequences do not matter." There was quite a little dispute between the sister and brother. He declared that as he killed the man he alone was entitled to the glory and the punishment; but the sister declared that it was done at her request, and also that she was prepared to kill if her brother had failed. Both were found guilty, and both were committed to a criminal lunatic asylum. Yet they had every appearance of being thoroughly sane; their manner, their speech, their reasoning powers, and everything appertaining to them, savoured of clear reason, their delusion alone excepted. If that delusion had not been so manifest, undoubtedly they would have been hanged. There seems to me to be no point from which a line can be drawn to divide insanity from sanity. At present we have but clumsy, uncertain, and very speculative methods of deciding upon a prisoner's sanity--methods that must often result in the punishment, if not the death, of the prisoners who suffer from some kind of mental disease. I am inclined to believe that the more all traces of madness are hidden by clever murderers, the stronger is the probability of that madness existing, for the very essence of cunning is employed in hiding it. They will cheerfully contemplate the executioner's rope rather than be considered mad. The brother and sister to whom I have referred would have cheerfully accepted the death penalty in preference to committal to a lunatic asylum. In one of my conversations with the brother, I suddenly asked him: "Have any of your relations been detained in lunatic asylums?" He was quite ready for me, and he replied: "I am as sane as you are; and if you are ever placed in a similar situation to mine, I hope you will prove as sane as I have." The more I think over the two cases--one woman found sane and hanged, the other declared insane and sent to a lunatic asylum--the more I am convinced that equal justice has not been done. Probably the madness in both women proceeded from the same cause, and it is clear that neither of them had the slightest compunction about shedding blood.