"I told you," he said, "that a wave of hostility had risen in the public mind against Philip Ashley. It came from a sense of sympathy for the other son, who, deformed and afflicted, had been done out of a fortune. True that it would not have been of much use to him, and that in the original will ample provision had been made for his modest wants, but it now seemed as if, at the eleventh hour, the old miser had thought to make reparation toward the son who had given up his whole life to him, whilst the other had led one of leisure, independence, and gaiety. What had caused old Thornton Ashley thus to change his mind was never conclusively proved; there were some rumours already current that Philip Ashley was in debt and had appealed to his father for money, a fatal thing to do with a miser. But this also was never actually proved. The only persons who could have enlightened the jury on the subject were Philip Ashley himself and his brother, Charles, but each of them, for reasons of his own, chose to remain silent. "And now you will no doubt recall the fact which finally determined the jury to bring in their sensational verdict, in consequence of which Philip Ashley was arrested on the coroner's warrant on a charge of attempted murder. It seemed horrible, ununderstandable, unbelievable, but, nevertheless, a jury of twelve men did arrive at that momentous decision after deliberation lasting less than half an hour. What I believe weighed with them in the end was the fact that the assistant who came with the divisional surgeon to conduct the _post-mortem_ found underneath the bed of the deceased, a walking-stick with a crook-handle, and the crumpled and torn copy of the notes for the new will which Mr. Triscott had prepared. Philip Ashley when confronted with the stick admitted that it was his. He had missed it on the Saturday when he was leaving the flat, as he was under the impression that he had brought one with him; however, he did not want to spend any more time looking for it, as he was obviously so very much in the way. "Now, both the charwoman and Mrs. Triscott swore that the patient's room had been cleaned and tidied on the Sunday, and that there was no sign of a walking-stick in the room then. §5 "And so," the Old Man in the Corner went on, with a cynical shrug of his lean shoulders, "Philip Ashley went through the terrible ordeal of being hauled up before the magistrate on the charge of having attempted to murder his father, an old man with one foot in the grave. He pleaded 'Not Guilty,' and reserved his defence. The whole of the evidence was gone through all over again, of course, but nothing new had transpired. The case was universally thought to look very black against the accused, and no one was surprised when he was eventually committed for trial.