“As counsel for the defendants, the aspect of the case was far from inviting, and as the very beery solicitor who instructed me observed, ‘It looked uncommon fishy.’
“In that remark I entirely concurred, and folded up the papers with a hopeless sigh, cursing the ill-luck that always brought me the deadest cases.
“In the present instance there was little for me to do but to sit by and hold my tongue—a process, by-the-way, anything but satisfactory to one fond of hearing the sound of his own voice.
“Apart from professional regrets, I could not help feeling that this precious pair of rascals thoroughly deserved all they were likely to get, and the longer they were shut up, the better for the community at large.
“The trial came on in due course, and the two prisoners were placed at the bar. As I looked at them, I was much struck with their gentlemanly appearance and dress, but then I remembered that, all that was part of the stock-in-trade of persons of their class, and turning to my brief, prepared to do battle.
“As this is but a subsidiary portion of my story, it is unnecessary for me to linger over the details of the trial. They say that lucky fate often follows on the footsteps of rogues, and in this instance, by some unpardonable carelessness on the part of the constable, the loaded dice which had been found under the hand of one of the prisoners were not forthcoming, and after a great deal of wrangling with the counsel on the other side, the learned judge said that the prosecution in not producing it had, in his opinion, failed to make out a sufficient case to go to the jury, and that he must therefore direct a verdict for the acquittal of the prisoners.
“They were as much astonished and overpowered as myself by the unexpected turn things had taken, and with admirable celerity disappeared from the dock.
“Some four years afterwards I received a very pressing invitation from my old Eton friend, Charlie Forrester, asking me to run down to his place in Devonshire, and spend a few days with him.
“Master Charlie, whose lines had fallen in exceeding pleasant places, and who at twenty-one had come into a very nice estate and some five thousand pounds annually, after tantalising all the marriageable girls in the county by refusing to go to balls and croquet parties, with invitations for which he was pertinaciously pestered from morning till night, had finally taken himself abroad, no one knew whither, and there remained between four and five years.
“When he returned home again he brought a wife with him, a proceeding on his part which excited general discontent and disapprobation.