some exciting accident a natural introduction to an exclusive fellow-
passenger, whom he discovers as human as he had thought him offensively
distant.

Charley began by congratulating the crown attorney on his statement of
the case. He called it masterly; he said that in its presentations it
was irrefutable; as a precis of evidence purely circumstantial it was--
useful and interesting. But, speech-making aside, and ability--and
rhetoric--aside, and even personal conviction aside, the case should
stand or fall by its total, not its comparative, soundness. Since the
evidence was purely circumstantial, there must be no flaw in its cable of
assumption, it must be logically inviolate within itself. Starting with
assumption only, there must be no straying possibilities, no loose ends
of certainty, no invading alternatives. Was this so in the case of the
man before them? They were faced by a curious situation. So far as the
trial was concerned, the prisoner himself was the only person who could
tell them who he was, what was his past, and, if he committed the crime,
what was--the motive of it: out of what spirit--of revenge, or hatred--
the dead man had been sent to his account. Probably in the whole history
of crime there never was a more peculiar case. Even himself the
prisoner's counsel was dealing with one whose life was hid from him
previous to the day the murdered man was discovered by the roadside.
The prisoner had not sought to prove an alibi; he had done no more than
formally plead not guilty. There was no material for defence save that
offered by the prosecution. He had undertaken the defence of the
prisoner because it was his duty as a lawyer to see that the law
justified itself; that it satisfied every demand of proof to the last
atom of certainty; that it met the final possibility of doubt with
evidence perfect and inviolate if circumstantial, and uncontradictory if
eye-witness, if tell-tale incident, were to furnish basis of proof.