"Found guilty, poor fellows!"
"You don't say so?"
"Fact, by Jove, though!"
"How could Mr. Gobble have lost that verdict? I assure you I would have bet ten to one on your getting a verdict; for I read over your brief as it lay beside me, and upon my honor, Mr. Flaw, it was most admirably got up. Everything depends on the brief"——
"Glad you thought so, sir," replied Flaw, wondering how it was that he had never before thought of giving a brief to Mr. Hug.
"It's a great mistake of counsel," quoth Hug, earnestly—"not to pay the utmost attention to their briefs! For my part," he continued in a lower tone, "I make a point of reading every syllable in my brief, however long it is!"
"It's the only way, depend on it, sir. We attorneys, you know, see and know so much of the case, conversing confidentially with the prisoners"——
"Ay, and beyond that—Your practical suggestions, my dear sir, are often—— Now, for instance, in the brief I was alluding to, there was, I recollect—one most—uncommonly acute suggestion"——
"Sir—you're uncommonly flattering! Am particularly obliged to you! May I ask, what it was that struck you?"—inquired the attorney, briskly, his countenance showing the progress of Hug's lubricating process.
"Oh—why—a—a—hem!" stammered Hug, somewhat nonplussed—(for his little fiction had been accepted as a fact!) "No; it would hardly be fair to Gobble, and I'm sorry indeed"——