"Ledsam's had a touch of nerves," he confided. "There's been nothing
else the matter with him. We've been down at the Dormy House at
Brancaster and he's as right as a trivet now. That Hilditch affair did
him in completely."

"I don't see why," one of the bystanders observed. "He got Hilditch off
all right. One of the finest addresses to a jury I ever heard."

"That's just the point," Wilmore explained "You see, Ledsam had no idea
that Hilditch was really guilty, and for two hours that afternoon he
literally fought for his life, and in the end wrested a verdict from the
jury, against the judge's summing up, by sheer magnetism or eloquence
or whatever you fellows like to call it. The very night after, Hilditch
confesses his guilt and commits suicide."

"I still don't see where Ledsam's worry comes in," the legal luminary
remarked. "The fact that the man was guilty is rather a feather in the
cap of his counsel. Shows how jolly good his pleading must have been."

"Just so," Wilmore agreed, "but Ledsam, as you know, is a very
conscientious sort of fellow, and very sensitive, too. The whole thing
was a shock to him."

"It must have been a queer experience," a novelist remarked from the
outskirts of the group, "to dine with a man whose life you have juggled
away from the law, and then have him explain his crime to you, and
the exact manner of its accomplishment. Seems to bring one amongst the
goats, somehow."

"Bit of a shock, no doubt," the lawyer assented, "but I still don't
understand Ledsam's sending back all his briefs. He's not going to chuck
the profession, is he?"

"Not by any means," Wilmore declared. "I think he has an idea, though,
that he doesn't want to accept any briefs unless he is convinced that
the person whom he has to represent is innocent, and lawyers don't like
that sort of thing, you know. You can't pick and choose, even when you
have Leadsam's gifts."

"The fact of it is," the novelist commented, "Francis Ledsam isn't
callous enough to be associated with you money-grubbing dispensers of
the law. He'd be all right as Public Prosecutor, a sort of Sir Galahad
waving the banner of virtue, but he hates to stuff his pockets at the
expense of the criminal classes."

"Who the mischief are the criminal classes?" a police court magistrate
demanded. "Personally, I call war profiteering criminal, I call a good
many Stock Exchange deals criminal, and," he added, turning to a member
of the committee who