The tension of the past estrangement, relaxing all at once, surprised the jury into an almost eager friendliness, as on a long voyage a sensitive traveller finds in some exciting accident a natural introduction to an exclusive fellow-passenger, whom he discovers as human as he had thought him offensively distant.
Charley began by congratulating the crown attorney on his statement of the case.

He called it masterly; he said that in its presentations it was irrefutable; as a precis of evidence purely circumstantial it was--useful and interesting.

But, speech-making aside, and ability--and rhetoric--aside, and even personal conviction aside, the case should stand or fall by its total, not its comparative, soundness.

Since the evidence was purely circumstantial, there must be no flaw in its cable of assumption, it must be logically inviolate within itself.

Starting with assumption only, there must be no straying possibilities, no loose ends of certainty, no invading alternatives.