. What is your opinion?"

"It might have been," said the doctor cautiously.

"It was certainly caused by a pointed weapon--some sort of a spiked
weapon?" suggested Mr. Lindsey.

"A sharp, pointed weapon, most certainly," affirmed the doctor.

"There are other things than a salmon gaff that, in your opinion, could
have caused it?"

"Oh, of course!" said the doctor.

Mr. Lindsey paused a moment, and looked round the court as if he were
thinking over his next question. Then he suddenly plunged his hand under
the table at which he was standing, and amidst a dead silence drew out a
long, narrow brown-paper parcel which I had seen him bring to the office
that morning. Quietly, while the silence grew deeper and the interest
stronger, he produced from this an object such as I had never seen
before--an implement or weapon about three feet in length, its shaft made
of some tough but evidently elastic wood, furnished at one end with a
strong iron ferrule, and at the other with a steel head, one extremity of
which was shaped like a carpenter's adze, while the other tapered off to
a fine point. He balanced this across his open palms for a moment, so
that the court might see it--then he passed it over to the witness-box.

"Now, doctor," he said, "look at that--which is one of the latest forms
of the ice-ax. Could that wound have been caused by that--or something
very similar to it?"

The witness put a forefinger on the sharp point of the head.

"Certainly!" he answered. "It is much more likely to have been caused by
such an implement as this than by a salmon gaff."

Mr. Lindsey reached out his hand for the ice-ax, and, repossessing
himself of it, passed it and its brown-paper wrapping to me.

"Thank you, doctor," he said; "that's all I wanted to know." He turned to
the bench. "I wish to ask your worships, if it is your intention, on the
evidence you have heard, to commit the prisoner on the capital charge
today?" he asked. "If it is, I shall oppose such a course. What I do ask,
knowing what I do, is that you should adjourn this case for a week--when
I shall have some evidence to put before you which, I think, will prove
that this man did not kill Abel Crone."

There was some discussion. I paid little attention to it, being
considerably amazed at the sudden turn which things had taken, and
astonished altogether by Mr. Lindsey's production of the ice-ax. But the
discussion ended in Mr. Lindsey having his own way, and Carte