ortune to be
born. You won't laugh at 'Miserrimus' again, will you?" He turned to the
Dean of Faculty, waiting to examine him for the defense. "Mr. Dean. I
am at your service. I apologize for delaying, even for a moment, the
proceedings of the Court."

He delivered his little address with perfect grace and good-humor.
Examined by the Dean, he gave his evidence clearly, without the
slightest appearance of hesitation or reserve.

"I was staying at Gleninch as a guest in the house at the time of Mrs.
Eustace Macallan's death," he began. "Doctor Jerome and Mr. Gale desired
to see me at a private interview--the prisoner being then in a state of
prostration which made it impossible for him to attend to his duties as
master of the house. At this interview the two doctors astonished and
horrified me by declaring that Mrs. Eustace Macallan had died poisoned.
They left it to me to communicate the dreadful news to her husband, and
they warned me that a post-mortem examination must be held on the body.

"If the Fiscal had seen my old friend when I communicated the doctors'
message, I doubt if he would have ventured to charge the prisoner with
the murder of his wife. To my mind the charge was nothing less than an
outrage. I resisted the seizure of the prisoner's Diary and letters,
animated by that feeling. Now that the Diary has been produced, I agree
with the prisoner's mother in denying that it is fair evidence to bring
against him. A Diary (when it extends beyond a bare record of facts and
dates) is nothing but an expression of the poorest and weakest side in
the character of the person who keeps it. It is, in nine cases out of
ten, the more or less contemptible outpouring of vanity and conceit
which the writer dare not exhibit to any mortal but himself. I am the
prisoner's oldest friend. I solemnly declare that I never knew he could
write downright nonsense until I heard his Diary read in this Court!

"_He_ kill his wife! _He_ treat his wife with neglect and cruelty! I
venture to say, from twenty years' experience of him, that there is no
man in this assembly who is constitutionally more incapable of crime and
more incapable of cruelty than the man who stands at the Bar. While I
am about it, I go further still. I even doubt whether a man capable of
crime and capable of cruelty could have found it in his heart to do evil
to the woman whose untimely death is the subject of this inquiry.

"I have heard what the ignorant and pre