rse, and insisted
upon calling in a second opinion. No doubt he didn't like the aconitine
when it came to the pinch--for it DOES pinch, I can tell you--and
repented him of his evil. Yorke-Bannerman suggested Sebastian as the
second opinion; the uncle acquiesced; Sebastian was called in, and,
of course, being fresh from his researches, immediately recognised the
symptoms of aconitine poisoning."

"What! Sebastian found it out?" I cried, starting.

"Oh, yes! Sebastian. He watched the case from that point to the end; and
the oddest part of it all was this--that though he communicated with
the police, and himself prepared every morsel of food that the poor old
Admiral took from that moment forth, the symptoms continually increased
in severity. The police contention was that Yorke-Bannerman somehow
managed to put the stuff into the milk beforehand; my own theory was--as
counsel for the accused"--he blinked his fat eyes--"that old Prideaux
had concealed a large quantity of aconitine in the bed, before his
illness, and went on taking it from time to time--just to spite his
nephew."

"And you BELIEVE that, Mr. Mayfield?"

The broad smile broke concentrically in ripples over the great lawyer's
face. His smile was Mayfield's main feature. He shrugged his shoulders
and expanded his big hands wide open before him. "My dear Hubert,"
he said, with a most humorous expression of countenance, "you are a
professional man yourself; therefore you know that every profession
has its own little courtesies--its own small fictions. I was
Yorke-Bannerman's counsel, as well as his friend. 'Tis a point of honour
with us that no barrister will ever admit a doubt as to a client's
innocence--is he not paid to maintain it?--and to my dying day I will
constantly maintain that old Prideaux poisoned himself. Maintain it
with that dogged and meaningless obstinacy with which we always cling
to whatever is least provable.... Oh, yes! He poisoned himself; and
Yorke-Bannerman was innocent.... But still, you know, it WAS the sort of
case where an acute lawyer, with a reputation to make, would prefer to
be for the Crown rather than for the prisoner."

"But it was never tried," I ejaculated.

"No, happily for us, it was never tried. Fortune favoured us.
Yorke-Bannerman had a weak heart, a conveniently weak heart, which the
inquest sorely affected; and besides, he was deeply angry at what
he persisted in calling Sebastian's defection. He evidently thought