“Read this, Beattie, and tell me what you say to it,” said the Chief Baron, as he handed the doctor Sir Brook's letter; “I'll tell you of the writer when you have read it.”
Beattie read the note in silence, and as he laid it on the table said, “I know the man, and his strange old-fashioned writing would have recalled him without his name.”
“And what do you know of him, sir?” asked the Judge, sternly.
“I can tell you the story in three words: He came to consult me one morning, about six or eight months ago. It was about an insurance on his life,—a very small sum he wanted to raise, to go out to this very place he writes from. He got to talk about the project, and I don't exactly know how it came about,—I forget the details now,—but it ended by my lending him the money myself.”
“What, sir! do you combine usury with physic?”
“On that occasion I appear to have done so,” said Beattie, laughing.
“And you advanced a sum of money to a man whom you saw for the first time, simply on his showing that his life was too insecure to guarantee repayment?”
“That puts the matter a little too nakedly.”
“It puts it truthfully, sir, I apprehend.”
“If you mean that the man impressed me so favorably that I was disposed to do him a small service, you are right.”