In after years he once told me that his habit had always been to prepare his cases chronologically. He wanted to know what was missing in the story he had to tell, to be prepared in anticipation for any surprise coming from the other side that might suddenly be brought to fill the vacant gaps in his own narrative. And this simple process of preparation showed itself in his methods as an advocate. His power of presenting his case had something of the charm a story-teller can command. It was always lucid, direct, and consecutive, never halting or confused. Sir William Gilbert once told me that on a certain occasion he was in Court listening to his own counsel opening to the jury the story of his own case. He said he was charmed, by the interest of the narrative as it was gradually developed, and that the only criticism that occurred to him was that the substance of the speech bore no relation to the contention he had come into Court to establish. Such a reproach, I think, could never at any period in his career have been made against the late Lord Russell. I did not at first recognise that Russell had in his constant opponent, John Holker, a man of intellectual power, as great, or perhaps even greater, than his own. Holker had little of the grace that Russell could boast; his personality was outwardly heavy and uncouth; his language, rarely eloquent, was sometimes even rough and halting. But in his grasp of every case presented to him, and in his power of imposing the view he sought to uphold upon a northern jury, even Russell was not his equal. A man of great physique, in person cumbrous and heavy, and in facial expression unalert and uninspiring, he sometimes gave to his hearers rather the impression of a giant talking in his sleep. But as I watched him from day to day, it very soon became convincingly clear to me that the giant was there. He seemed to notice nothing, and yet nothing escaped him. His method of appeal to the jury had something almost of cunning in its apparent helplessness. Even when he was nearing success, and the verdict was within his grasp, he still retained the air of a man whose cause was in danger owing to his inferior grace of style and his halting powers of eloquence. He had that persuasive art of convincing the jury that he was a plain man like themselves, and that the cause of justice was likely to suffer by reason of the superior intellectual attainments of his opponents, unless he and they laid their heads together as plain men, and stood shoulder to shoulder in earnest endeavour to vindicate the right.