lts of its vindication."

Mr. Cavendish jumped up and interjected spitefully: "I beg the gentleman
to spare us his hypothetical sentiment. It is superfluous, so far as my
client is concerned, and offensive."

Mr. Balfour waited calmly for the little explosion and the clearing away
of the smoke, and then resumed. "I take no pleasure in making myself
offensive to the defendant and his counsel," said he, "but, if I am
interrupted, I shall be compelled to call things by their right names,
and to do some thing more than hint at the real status of this case. I
see other trials, in other courts, at the conclusion of this
action,--other trials with graver issues. I could not look forward to
them with any pleasure, without acknowledging myself to be a knave. I
could not refrain from alluding to them, without convicting myself of
carelessness and frivolity. Something more than money is involved in the
issue of this action. Either the plaintiff or the defendant will go out
of this court wrecked in character, blasted in reputation, utterly
ruined. The terms of the bill and the answer determine this result."

Mr. Cavendish sat through this exordium as if he sat on nettles, but
wisely held his tongue, while the brazen-faced proprietor leaned
carelessly over, and whispered to his counsel. Phipps, on his distant
seat, grew white around the lips, and felt that he was on the verge of
the most serious danger of his life.

"The plaintiff, in this case," Mr. Balfour went on, "brings an action
for damages for the infringement of various patent rights. I shall prove
to you that these patents were issued to him, as the first and only
inventor; that he has never assigned them to any one; that they have
been used by the defendant for from seven to ten years, to his great
profit; that he is using them still without a license, and without
rendering a just consideration for them. I shall prove to you that the
defendant gained his first possession of these inventions by a series of
misrepresentations, false promises, oppressions and wrongs, and has used
them without license in consequence of the weakness, illness, poverty
and defencelessness of their rightful owner. I shall prove to you that
their owner was driven to insanity by these perplexities and the
persecutions of the defendant, and that even after he became insane, the
defendant tried to secure the execution of the assignment which he had
sought in vain during the sanity of the patentee.