“Tell us what occurred,” said Crepitude.

“Well, we fought.”

“Oh!  You fought!  What did you two naughty boys fight about?” (Great laughter.)

“About a plum-cake, I think.”

“Oh!  Not a seed-cake, a plum-cake?” (Great laughter.)

“I think a plum-cake.”

“And what was the result of this sanguinary encounter?” (Great laughter.)

“My cousin loosened one of my teeth.” (Great laughter, in which the court joined.)

“And what did you do to him?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t do much.  I remember tearing half his clothes off.”  (Roars of laughter, in which every one joined except Priam and Duncan Farll.)

“Oh!  You are sure you remember that?  You are sure that it wasn’t he who tore your clothes off?” (Lots of hysteric laughter.)

“Yes,” said Duncan, coldly dreaming in the past.  His eyes had the ’far away’ look, as he added, “I remember now that my cousin had two little moles on his neck below the collar.  I seem to remember seeing them.  I’ve just thought of it.”

There is, of course, when it is mentioned in a theatre, something exorbitantly funny about even one mole.  Two moles together brought the house down.

Mr. Crepitude leaned over to a solicitor in front of him; the solicitor leaned aside to a solicitor’s clerk, and the solicitor’s clerk whispered to Priam Farll, who nodded.

“Er——­” Mr. Crepitude was beginning again, but he stopped and said to Duncan Farll, “Thank you.  You can step down.”

Then a witness named Justini, a cashier at the Hotel de Paris, Monte Carlo, swore that Priam Farll, the renowned painter, had spent four days in the Hotel de Paris one hot May, seven years ago, and that the person in the court whom the defendant stated to be Priam Farll was not that man.  No cross-examination could shake Mr. Justini.  Following him came the manager of the Hotel Belvedere at Mont Pelerin, near Vevey, Switzerland, who related a similar tale and was equally unshaken.

And after that the pictures themselves were brought in, and the experts came after them and technical evidence was begun.  Scarcely had it begun when a clock struck and the performance ended for the day.  The principal actors doffed their costumes, and snatched up the evening papers to make sure that the descriptive reporters had been as eulogistic of them as usual.  The judge, who subscribed to a press-cutting agency, was glad to find, the next morning, that none of his jokes had been omitted by any of the nineteen chief London dailies.  And the Strand and Piccadilly were quick with Witt v.  Parfitts—­on evening posters and in the strident mouths of newsboys.  The telegraph wires vibrated to Witt v.  Parfitts.  In the great betting industrial towns of the provinces wagers were laid at scientific prices.  England, in a word, was content, and the principal actors had the right to be content also.  Very astute people in clubs and saloon bars talked darkly about those two moles, and Priam’s nod in response to the whispers of the solicitor’s clerk:  such details do not escape the modern sketch writer at a thousand a year.  To very astute people the two moles appeared to promise pretty things.