"What is it all to me?" asked Cousin Henry.
"Oh, nothing, sir. To a gentleman like you who knows what he's about it's all nothing. What can Mr Cheekey do to a gentleman who has got nothing to conceal? But when a witness has something to hide,—and sometimes there will be something,—then it is that Mr Cheekey comes out strong. He looks into a man and sees that it's there, and then he turns him inside out till he gets at it. That's what I call skinning a witness. I saw a poor fellow once so knocked about by Mr Cheekey that they had to carry him down speechless out of the witness-box."
It was a vivid description of all that Cousin Henry had pictured to himself. And he had actually, by his own act, subjected himself to this process! Had he been staunch in refusing to bring any action against the newspaper, Mr Cheekey would have been powerless in reference to him. And now he was summoned into Carmarthen to prepare himself by minor preliminary pangs for the torture of the auto-da-fé which was to be made of him.
"I don't see why I should go into Carmarthen at all," he said, having paused a while after the eloquent description of the barrister's powers.
"Not come into Carmarthen! Why, sir, you must complete the instructions."
"I don't see it at all."
"Then do you mean to back out of it altogether, Mr Jones? I wouldn't be afeared by Mr Cheekey like that!"
Then it occurred to him that if he did mean to back out of it altogether he could do so better at a later period, when they might hardly be able to catch him by force and bring him as a prisoner before the dreaded tribunal. And as it was his purpose to avoid the trial by giving up the will, which he would pretend to have found at the moment of giving it up, he would ruin his own project,—as he had done so many projects before,—by his imbecility at the present moment. Cheekey would not be there in Mr Apjohn's office, nor the judge and jury and all the crowd of the court to look at him.
"I don't mean to back out at all," he said; "and it's very impertinent of you to say so."
"I didn't mean impertinence, Mr Jones;—only it is necessary you should come into Mr Apjohn's office."