“I tore them up.”

“Why?  What became of the pieces?”

“I threw them away.”

“Do you remember what price you had arrived at when you reached Peterborough, for instance?”

The expert thought I was some one whom we never mention except when in a bad temper, and he was more and more puzzled when he found that at every stoppage I knew how much his price had increased.

As the case was tried by an arbitrator and not a jury, my task was easy, arbitrators not being so likely to be befooled as the other form of tribunal.  This arbitrator, especially, knew the elasticity of an expert’s opinion, and therefore I was not alarmed for my client.  The amount was soon arrived at by reducing the sum claimed by no less than L90,000.  Thus vanished the visionary claim and the expert.  He evidently had not been trained by the cunning old surveyor whose experience taught him to be moderate, and ask only twice as much as you ought to get.

In another claim, which was no less than L10,000, the jury gave L300.  This was a state of things that had to be stopped, and it could only be accomplished at that time by counsel who appeared on behalf of the companies.

Sir Henry Hunt was one of the best of arbitrators, and it was difficult to deceive him.  It took a clever expert to convince him that a piece of land whose actual value would be L100 was worth L20,000.

Sir Henry once paid me a compliment—­of course, I was not present.

“Hawkins,” said he, “is the very best advocate of the day, and, strange to say, his initials are the same as mine.  You may turn them upside down and they will still stand on their legs” (H.H.).

Sir Henry was sometimes a witness, and as such always dangerous to the side against whom he was called, because he was a judge of value and a man of honour.

One instance in which I took a somewhat novel course in demolishing a fictitious claim is, perhaps, worth while to relate, although so many years have passed since it occurred.

It was so far back as the time of the old Hungerford Market, which the railway company was taking for their present Charing Cross terminus.  The question was as to the value of a business for the sale of medical appliances.

Mr. Lloyd, as usual, was for the business, while I appeared for the company.  My excellent friend proceeded on the good old lines of compensation advocacy with the same comfortable routine that one plays the old family rubber of threepenny points.  I occasionally finessed, however, and put my opponent off his play.  He held good hands, but if I had an occasionally bad one, I sometimes managed to save the odd trick.

Lloyd had expatiated on the value of the situation, the highroad between Waterloo Station and the Strand, immense traffic and grand frontage.  To prove all this he called a multitude of witnesses, who kissed the same book and swore the same thing almost in the same words.  But to his great surprise I did not cross-examine.  Lloyd was bewildered, and said I had admitted the value by not cross-examining, and he should not call any more witnesses.