Thus one of the leading jurists of the day. He was not present at the trial, nor is it likely that his balanced scrutiny would have been affected by the picture I have in my own mind, of a grey day, herald of winter, the gas jets in the courtroom dimmed and flickering, so that as daylight faded, the shapes of judge, jury, and prisoners swam in a greenish twilight: the muffled Cathedral chimes each quarter hour, the hissing of the heating apparatus, voices that droned on more and more slowly as if they must die at last in darkness.

The little doctor, as I saw him then, was very quiet and still. But once, during some evidence of a particularly repetitive kind, there came into his quietude a sudden emptying of consciousness that could only mean one thing, and that an extremely shocking thing in a man on trial for his life. He had dozed off! His head nodded for a moment, till a warder tapped him so vigorously on the shoulder that he nearly slid to the floor.

“The court would be obliged if the prisoner would pay attention.”

“I beg your pardon,” answered the little doctor, almost inaudibly.

If you were born in Calderbury during the first decade of the twentieth century, David Newcome may well have ushered you into the world, for he had begun to practise in 1899. A year after that he married the daughter of a rural dean; they had one child, a boy. Jessica mixed with the best Cathedral society and was always on the committee of this, that, and the other. David didn’t share many of her interests; sometimes he went to Sunday service with her, but more often not, for a doctor has all the best excuses. He was generous, however, with subscriptions, and some of the Cathedral people called him “our doctor” because of his wife. Perhaps that was really why they also called him “little,” since it was not he who was less than average in height, but Jessica who was more. She was five feet ten, which is tall enough in any woman.

Perhaps too there was endearment in the diminutive, for a film of guilelessness often covered his brown eyes when he looked one over; and when he examined a child, one could think of two children examining each other. He had beautiful hands, simple manners (no manners at all, Jessica sometimes said), and a way of telling the truth if he thought you needed it. “There’s nothing the matter with you,” he would declare, quite simply, and leave you to try another doctor if you wanted coddling. His voice was quiet, and to those who preferred their own he would listen for a while — or, at any rate, seem to be listening. He smoked cherry-wood pipes which he bought for a penny each, and he always wore the same sort of dark blue suit. When he was seen about the town with Jessica people would say, acknowledging her by the adjective they bestowed on him, “There goes the little doctor.”