Part 12 (2/2)

Once more he overwhelmed me with the eloquence of a grateful heart, but said it was of no use--no use whatever; that instead of 1,250 he had other bills coming in, and unless they could all be met he might just as well let the others go.

”How much do you _really_ want to quite clear you?” I asked, with a simplicity which astonishes me to this day.

”Well,” he said, ”nothing is of the least use under 2,500.”

I was a little staggered, but, pitying his distress of mind, went once more to my bankers' and made the further necessary arrangements. I borrowed the whole amount at five per cent., and placed it to the credit of this brilliant Queen's Counsel.

The only terms I made with him on this new condition of things was that he should, out of his incoming fees, pay my clerk 500 a quarter until the whole sum was liquidated. This he might easily have done, and this he arranged to do; but the next day he pledged the whole of his prospective income to a Jew, incurred fresh liabilities, and left me without a shadow of a chance of ever seeing a penny of my money again. I need not say every farthing was lost, princ.i.p.al and interest.

I say interest, because it cost me five per cent, till the amount was paid.

His end was as romantic as his life, but it is best told in the words of my old friend Charley Colman, who never spares colour when it is necessary, and in that respect is an artist who resembles Nature. Thus he writes:--

”What a coward at heart was ----! He allowed himself to be sat upon and crushed without raising a hand or voice in his defence of himself.

When he returned from America he accepted a seat in ---- office--in the office of the man who urged Lord ---- to prosecute him.

”After your gift to him--a n.o.ble gift of 3,000--he called at my chambers, spoke in high terms of your generosity, and wished all the world to know it, so elated was he. I was to publish it far and wide.

He went away. In half an hour he returned, and begged me to keep the affair secret. 'Too late,' said I. 'Several gentlemen have been here, and to them I mentioned the matter, and begged them to spread it far and wide.' His heart failed him when he thought he would be talked about.

”He was a kind-hearted fellow at times--generous to a fault, always most abstemious; but he had a tongue, and one he did not try to control. He used to say stinging things of people, knowing them to be untrue.

”What a life! What a terrible fate was his! Turned out of Parliament; made to resign his Benchers.h.i.+p; his gown taken from him by the Benchers; driven to America by his creditors to get his living; not allowed to practise in the Supreme Court in America. At forty-five years of age his life had foundered. He returns to England--for what!

Simply to find his recklessness had blasted his life, and then--?

”Sometimes, in spite of _all_, I feel a moisture in my eye when I think of him. Had he been true to himself what a brilliant life was open to him! What a practice he had! Up to the last he told me that he turned 14,000 a year. He worked hard, very hard, and his gains went to ---- or to chicken-hazard! Poor fellow!”

CHAPTER XIV.

PETER RYLAND--THE REV. MR. FAKER AND THE WELSH WILL.

I was retained at Hertford a.s.sizes, with Peter Ryland as my leader, to prosecute a man for perjury, which was alleged to have been committed in an action in which a cantankerous man, who had once filled the office of High Sheriff for the county, was the prosecutor. Wealthy and disagreeable, he was nevertheless a henpecked tyrant.

Mrs. Brown, his wife, was a witness for the prosecution in the alleged perjury--which was unfortunate for her husband, because she had the greatest knowledge of the circ.u.mstances surrounding the case; while Mr. Brown had the best knowledge of the probable quality of his wife's evidence.

When we were in consultation and considering the nature of this evidence, and arranging the best mode of presenting our case to the jury, Brown interposed, and begged that Mr. Ryland should call Mrs.

Brown as the _last_ witness, instead of first, which was the proper course. ”Because,” said he, ”_if anything goes wrong during the trial or anything is wanting, Mrs. Brown will be quite ready to mop it all up_.”

This in a prosecution for _perjury_ was one of the boldest propositions I had ever heard.

I need not say that good Mrs. Brown was called, as she ought to have been, first. The lady's mop was not in requisition at that stage of the trial, and the jury decided against her.

I was sometimes in the Divorce Court, and old Jack Holker was generally my opponent. He was called ”Long Odds.” In one particular case I won some _eclat_. It is not related on that account, however, but simply in consequence of its remarkable incidents. No case is interesting unless it is outside the ordinary stock-in-trade of the Law Courts, and I think this was.

The details are not worth telling, and I therefore pa.s.s them by.

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