"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 £90,000. 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 £10,000, the jury gave £300. This was a state of things that had to be stopped, and it could only be accomplished at that time by counsel who appeared on behalf of the companies. Sir Henry Hunt was one of the best of arbitrators, and it was difficult to deceive him. It took a clever expert to convince him that a piece of land whose actual value would be £100 was worth £20,000. Sir Henry once paid me a compliment--of course, I was not present. "Hawkins," said he, "is the very best advocate of the day, and, strange to say, his initials are the same as mine. You may turn them upside down and they will still stand on their legs" (H.H.). Sir Henry was sometimes a witness, and as such always dangerous to the side against whom he was called, because he was a judge of value and a man of honour. One instance in which I took a somewhat novel course in demolishing a fictitious claim is, perhaps, worth while to relate, although so many years have passed since it occurred. It was so far back as the time of the old Hungerford Market, which the railway company was taking for their present Charing Cross terminus. The question was as to the value of a business for the sale of medical appliances.