s satisfaction in discomfiting them, particularly
when--as in the present instance--the defence was used to shield an
accused of some social standing. For Dr. Horbury's political tendencies
were levelling and iconoclastic, and he had a deep contempt for caste,
titles, and monarchs.

He was too sophisticated as a witness to walk into Mr. Middleheath's
trap and contradict Sir Henry's evidence directly, but he contrived to
convey the impression that his own observation of accused, covering a
period of nine days, was a better guide for the jury in arriving at a
conclusion as to the accused's state of mind than Sir Henry's opinion,
formed after a single and limited opportunity of diagnosing the case. He
also managed to infer, in a gentlemanly professional way, that Sir Henry
Durwood was deservedly eminent in the medical world as a nerve
specialist, rather than as a mental specialist, whereas witness's own
experience in mental cases had been very wide. He talked learnedly of
the difficulty of diagnosing epilepsy except after prolonged
observation, and cited lengthily from big books, which a court constable
brought into court one by one, on symptoms, reflex causes, auras, grand
mal, petit mal, Jacksonian epilepsy, and the like.

The only admission of any value that Mr. Middleheath could extract from
Dr. Horbury was a statement that while he had seen no symptoms in the
prisoner to suggest that he was an epileptic, epileptics did not, as a
rule, show symptoms of the disease between the attack.

"Therefore, assuming the fact that Penreath is subject to epilepsy, you
would not necessarily expect to find any symptoms of the disease during
the time he was awaiting trial?" asked Mr. Middleheath, eagerly
following up the opening.

"Possibly nothing that one could swear to," rejoined the witness, in an
exceedingly dry tone.

Mr. Middleheath essayed no more questions, but got the witness out of
the box as quickly as possible, trusting to his own address to remove
the effect of the evidence on the mind of the jury. At the outset of
that address he pointed out that the case for the Crown rested upon
purely circumstantial evidence, and that nobody had seen the prisoner
commit the murder with which he was charged. The main portion of his
remarks was directed to convincing the jury that the prisoner was the
unhappy victim of epileptic attacks, in which he was not responsible for
his actions. He scouted the theory of motive, as put forwa