“Agreed,” cried several.
“And so to change the subject,” said Mr. Tangle, “I will just recount for your delectation a case that came under my notice.”
“That’s right,” cried Major Smithers Smythe.
“Every man has something interesting to tell of his experience in life, and none are more prolific in that way than you gentlemen of the legal profession.”
“I am not about to discuss some knotty point of law,” observed Tangle. “I leave that to its proper arena—a court of justice.”
“I know as much about law as a Hottentot,” returned Smythe. “Still, although ignorant, I’m willing to learn.”
“It was in the earlier days of my career,” said Tangle, “and briefs were like angels’ visits, but few and far between—in fact I had begun seriously to contemplate emigrating to British Columbia, or to some equally distant and desolate locality.
“Fortunately for me and society generally, which sooner or later must recognise my distinguished merits by placing me on the bench, I abandoned the idea of British Columbia, and went to Reading; a beneficent fate rewarded me for my courage in the shape of a big brief with a small fee, to defend two men for conspiring to cheat a young gentleman with more money than brains, by gambling with him and using loaded dice.
“It was a case that had excited a good deal of interest in the neighbourhood, partly from the very remarkable way in which the cheat had been discovered by a stranger who happened to be in the room where the play was going on, and who, suspecting that all was not right, had with a large carving fork pinned the hand of one of the conspirators to the table.
“Underneath it, sure enough, were found the loaded dice, which he had manipulated up and down his sleeve so skilfully that the verdant youth found himself some five hundred pounds to the bad.