"Why! that is only a month or two ago!"
"Just about nine weeks, I fancy."
"And he declined it?"
"He declines them all."
"But what can be his motive? It would give him more rest than he enjoys now——"
"I don't altogether know that," interrupted the clerk. "The judges are very much over-worked now. It would increase his responsibility; and he is one to feel that, perhaps painfully."
"You mean when he had to pass the dread sentence of death. A new judge must always feel that at the beginning."
"I heard one of our present judges say—it was in this room, too, Mr. Charles—that the first time he put on the black cap he never closed his eyes the whole night after it. All the Bench are not so sensitive as that, you know."
A thought suddenly struck me. "Surely," I cried, "you do not mean that that is the reason for my uncle's refusing a seat on the Bench!"
"Not at all. He'd get over that in time, as others do. Oh no! that has nothing to do with it."