Exhilarated by freedom, Alfred began to nurse aspiring projects; he would indict his own father and the doctor, and wipe off the stigma they had cast on him. Meantime, he would cure David and restore him to his family. They bowled along towards blue water with a perfect sense of security. But at Folkestone, David disappeared, and Alfred, hearing as he ran wildly all over the place that there was "another party on the same lay"--the mad gentleman's wife--took the first train to London, dispirited and mortified. David was in good hands, however, and Alfred had glorious work on hand--love and justice. He at once put his affairs into a lawyer's hands, and thought of love alone. After a violent encounter with his late keepers and a narrow escape from capture, in the midst of Elysium with Julia, her mother returned in despair. David had completely disappeared. Again these lovers were separated, and again Edward's commonsense came to the rescue. Alfred went back to Oxford to read for his first class, and Julia to her district visiting, while the terrible delays of the law went on. Alfred had begun to believe trial by jury would never be allowed him, and when at last, after many postponements, the trial did come on, he was being examined in the schools, and refused to come till his counsel had actually opened the case. Mr. Thomas Hardie, Alfred's uncle, was the defendant, for it was proved he had authorised Alfred's arrest. A detective had been employed to find Mr. Barkington, a little man in Julia's district, whom the lawyers suspected might be useful; and when the trial was half over, he led them all in great excitement to the back slums of Westminster. Mr. Barkington, _alias_ Noah Skinner, was wanted by another client of his. The room was full of an acrid vapour, and a mummified figure sat at the table, dead this many a day of charcoal fumes; in his hand a banker's receipt to David Dodd, Esq., for £14,000. The lawyer was handing it to Julia, having just found a will bequeathing all Skinner had in the world to her, with his blessing, when a solemn voice said: "No; it is mine." A keen cry from Julia's heart, and in an instant she was clinging round her father's neck. Edward could only get at his hand. Instinct told them Heaven had given them back their father, mind and all. Alfred Hardie slipped out, and ran like a deer to tell Mrs. Dodd. Husband and wife met alone in Mrs. Dodd's room. No eyes ventured to witness a scene so strange, so sacred. They all thought in their innocence that Hardie _v_. Hardie was now at an end, with Captain Dodd ready to prove Alfred's sanity; but the lawyer advised them not to put the captain to the agitation of the witness-box. Mr. Thomas Hardie, the defendant, won the case for Alfred by admitting in the witness-box that his brother Richard had declared that "if you don't put Alfred in a madhouse, I will put you in one."