not blame Lord Coleridge for looking at the matter in this way.
But I naturally looked at it in a different light Mr. Bradlaugh was
my general, and I was his lieutenant, and it was clearly my duty to
sacrifice myself. I could release him from danger with half a dozen
words, and why should I hesitate to say them or he to exact them? I
was already in prison, and another conviction could add little to my
misfortune, whereas he was still free, and his continued freedom was
just then absolutely indispensable to our common cause. For my part, I
had not a moment's hesitation. But Lord Coleridge's words sank into Mr.
Bradlaugh's mind, and after luncheon he announced that he would _not_
call his co-defendants. His lordship looked pleased, but how he frowned
when Sir Hardinge Giffard complained that _he_ was deprived of an
opportunity! Lord Coleridge did not say, but he _looked_--"Have you no
sense of decency?" Sir Hardinge Giffard, however, was thick-skinned. He
relied on Mr. Bradlaugh's sense of honor, and made it the basis of an
artificial grievance. He even pretended that Mr. Bradlaugh was _afraid_
to call his co-defendants. But he overreached himself by this hypocrisy,
and obliged Mr. Bradlaugh to put his co-defendants into the witness-box.
We were formally tendered as witnesses, Mr. Bradlaugh going no further,
and leaving Sir Hardinge Giffard to do as he would. Of course he was
obliged to interrogate us, or look foolish after his braggadocio, and
in doing so he ruined his own case by giving us the opportunity! of
declaring that Mr. Bradlaugh was never in any way connected with the
_Freethinker_.

Mr. Bradlaugh, of course, did not in any sense sacrifice me. It would
have been contemptible on my part to let him bear any responsibility for
my own deliberate action, in which he was not at all implicated, and
if I had not been tendered as a witness I should have tried to tender
myself.

After half an hour's deliberation the jury found Mr. Bradlaugh not
guilty. Standing up for the verdict, with pale set face, the grateful
little "not" fell upon his ear, and his rigidity relaxed. Tears started
to _my_ eyes, and I saw the tears in _his_ eyes as I squeezed his hand
in speechless congratulation.

My own trial followed Mr. Bradlaugh's, and I was not found guilty. Three
members of the jury held out against a verdict that would have disgraced
a free country; and as the prosecution despaired of obtaining a verdict
while Lord Coleridge