The more I worked on the case, the clearer it became to me that Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke’s great-uncle had been either a consummate scoundrel or a lunatic, and that our only hope of winning must be based on proving him one or the other; it did not matter much which, for my expectations at best were small.  When I had at length settled to this conclusion I confided it as delicately as possible to my client, who was sitting at the time with his feet cocked up on the office table, reading a pink newspaper.

“Which’ll be the easier to prove?” he asked, without looking up.

“It would be more charitable to prove he had been out of his mind,” I replied, “and perhaps easier.”

“Charity be damned,” said this remarkable man.  “I’m after the property.”

So I decided on insanity.  I hunted up and subpoenaed white-haired witnesses for miles around.  Many of them shook their heads when they spoke of Mr. Cooke’s great-uncle, and some knew more of his private transactions than I could have wished, and I trembled lest my own witnesses should be turned against me.  I learned more of Mr. Cooke’s great-uncle than I knew of Mr. Cooke himself, and to the credit of my client be it said that none of his relative’s traits were apparent in him, with the possible exception of insanity; and that defect, if it existed in the grand-nephew, took in him a milder and less criminal turn.  The old rascal, indeed, had so cleverly worded his deed of sale as to obtain payment without transfer.  It was a trifle easier to avoid being specific in that country in his day than it is now, and the document was, in my opinion, sufficiently vague to admit of a double meaning.  The original sale had been made to a man, now dead, whom the railroad had bought out.  The Copper Rise property was mentioned among the other lands in the will in favor of Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, and the latter had gone ahead improving them and increasing their output in spite of the repeated threats of the railroad to bring suit.  And it was not until its present attorney had come in and investigated the title that the railroad had resorted to the law.  I mention here, by the way, that my client was the sole heir.

But as the time of the sessions drew near, the outlook for me was anything but bright.  It is true that my witnesses were quite willing to depose that his actions were queer and out of the common, but these witnesses were for the most part venerable farmers and backwoodsmen:  expert testimony was deplorably lacking.  In this extremity it was Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke himself who came unwittingly to my rescue.  He had bought a horse,—­he could never be in a place long without one,—­which was chiefly remarkable, he said, for picking up his hind feet as well as his front ones.  However he may have differed from the ordinary run of horses, he was shortly attacked by one of the thousand ills to which every horse is subject.  I will not pretend to say what it was.  I found Mr. Cooke one morning