“Poor old duffer,” said Mr. Cooke, with due solemnity; “I understand he was a maniac.”

“Well,” said the doctor, while we listened with a breathless interest, “he wasn’t exactly a maniac, but I think I can safely say he was a lunatic.”

“Then here’s to insanity!” said the irrepressible, his glass swung in mid-air, when a thought struck him, and he put it down again and looked hard at the doctor.

“Will you swear to it?” he demanded.

“I would swear to it before Saint Peter,” said the doctor, fervently.

He swore to it before a jury, which was more to the point, and we won our case.  It did not even go to the court of appeals; I suppose the railroad thought it cheaper to drop it, since no right of way was involved.  And the decision was scarcely announced before Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke had begun work on his new country place, Mohair.

I have oftentimes been led to consider the relevancy of this chapter, and have finally decided to insert it.  I concluded that the actual narrative of how Mr. Cooke came to establish his country-place near Asquith would be interesting, and likewise throw some light on that gentleman’s character.  And I ask the reader’s forbearance for the necessary personal history involved.  Had it not been for Mr. Cooke’s friendship for me I should not have written these pages.

CHAPTER III

Events, are consequential or inconsequential irrespective of their size.  The wars of Troy were fought for a woman, and Charles VIII, of France, bumped his head against a stone doorway and died because he did not stoop low enough.  And to descend from history down to my own poor chronicle, Mr. Cooke’s railroad case, my first experience at the bar of any gravity or magnitude, had tied to it a string of consequences then far beyond my guessing.  The suit was my stepping-stone not only to a larger and more remunerative practice, but also, I believe, to the position of district attorney, which I attained shortly afterwards.

Mr. Cooke had laid out Mohair as ruthlessly as Napoleon planned the new Paris; though not, I regret to say, with a like genius.  Fortunately Farrar interposed and saved the grounds, but there was no guardian angel to do a like turn for the house.  Mr. Langdon Willis, of Philadelphia, was the architect who had nominal charge of the building.  He had regularly submitted some dozen plans for Mr. Cooke’s approval, which were as regularly rejected.  My client believed, in common with a great many other people, that architects should be driven and not followed, and was plainly resolved to make this house the logical development of many cherished ideas.  It is not strange, therefore, that the edifice was completed by a Chicago contractor who had less self-respect than Mr. Willis, the latter having abruptly refused to have his name tacked on to the work.