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He had regained his aplomb by now, and arranged his papers methodically in front of him before he ventured another word. Then he looked up again, his calm and judicial air entirely regained.

“I have no wish to pose as a sentimentalist, or to have it thought that the mere glamour of a mystery would carry me outside the realms of common sense. But I must say, my lord, with all due deference, that it seems to me that your uncle was simply guided by weight of evidence in what he did. From the facts connected with its finding and those since elicited, I should say there can be no doubt that the document before you was written by Sir John Dorinecourte, and that the matters detailed in it were true. The good knight’s supposition about the identity of the persons he encountered seems to me extremely reasonable. Your uncle had nothing in his life to check his desires for adventure and discovery. It would have been marvellous to me if he had let such an opportunity escape him. I can see too,” he went on with a smile, “that our temperaments differ, my lord, and that though you are the soldier and I the lawyer, our blood flows with an irregularity that is not in sympathy with our professions.”