“I beg your pardon,” returned the judge, “I think he is a very good little boy.  He thinks that for every wilful fault he will go to hell fire; and he is very likely while he believes that doctrine to be most strict in his observance of truth.  If you and I believed that such would be the penalty for every act of misconduct we committed, we should be better men than we are.  Let the boy be sworn.”

On one occasion, before Maule, I had to defend a man for murder.  It was a terribly difficult case, because there was no defence except the usual one of insanity.

The court adjourned for lunch, and Woollet (who was my junior) and I went to consultation.  I was oppressed with the difficulty of my task, and asked Woollet what he thought I could do.

“Oh,” said he in his sanguine way, “make a hell of a speech.  You’ll pull him through all right.  Let ’em have it.”

“I’ll give them as much burning eloquence as I can manage,” said I, in my youthful ardour; “but what’s the use of words against facts?  We must really stand by the defence of insanity; it is all that’s left.”

“Call the clergyman,” said Woollet; “he’ll help us all he can.”

With that resolution we returned to court.  I made my speech for the defence, following Woollet’s advice as nearly as practicable, and really blazed away.  I think the jury believed there was a good deal in what I said, for they seemed a very discerning body and a good deal inclined to logic, especially as there was a mixture of passion in it.

We then called the clergyman of the village where the prisoner lived.  He said he had been Vicar for thirty-four years, and that up to very recently, a few days before the murder, the prisoner had been a regular attendant at his church.  He was a married man with a wife and two little children, one seven and the other nine.

“Did the wife attend your ministrations, too?” asked Maule.

“Not so regularly.  Suddenly,” continued the Vicar, after suppressing his emotion, “without any apparent cause, the man became a Sabbath-breaker, and absented himself from church.”

This evidence rather puzzled me, for I could not understand its purport.  Maule in the meantime was watching it with the keenest interest and no little curiosity.  He was not a great believer in the defence of insanity—­except, occasionally, that of the solicitor who set it up—­and consequently watched the Vicar with scrutinizing intensity.

“Have you finished with your witness, Mr. Woollet?” his lordship inquired.

“Yes, my lord.”

Maule then took him in hand, and after looking at him steadfastly for about a minute, said,—­

“You say, sir, that you have been Vicar of this parish for four-and-thirty years?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And during that time I dare say you have regularly performed the services of the Church?”

“Yes, my lord.”