e,--not that a guilty man should escape,
which he knew to be an affair occurring every day,--but that a guilty
man, who had been found to be guilty, should creep back through the
meshes of the law. He knew how many chances were given by the practice
of British courts to an offender on his trial, and he was quite in
favour of those chances. He would be urgent in telling a jury to give
the prisoner the benefit of a doubt. But when the transgressor, with all
those loopholes stopped, stood before him convicted, then he felt a
delight in the tightness of the grip with which he held the wretch, and
would tell himself that the world in which he lived was not as yet all
astray, in that a guilty man could still be made to endure the proper
reward of his guilt.

It was with him as when a hunter has hunted a fox after the approved
laws of venery. There have been a dozen ways of killing the animal of
which he has scorned to avail himself. He has been careful to let him
break from his covert, regarding all who would stop him as enemies to
himself. It has been a point of honour with him that the animal should
suffer no undue impediment. Any ill-treatment shown to the favoured one
in his course, is an injury done to the hunter himself. Let no man head
the fox, let no man strive to drive him back upon the hounds. Let all be
done by hunting law,--in accordance with those laws which give so many
chances of escape. But when the hounds have run into their quarry, not
all the eloquence of all the gods should serve to save that doomed one's
life.

So it was with Judge Bramber and a convicted prisoner. He would give the
man the full benefit of every quibble of the law till he was convicted.
He would be severe on witnesses, harsh to the police, apparently a very
friend to the man standing at the bar,--till the time came for him to
array the evidence before the jury. Then he was inexorable; and when the
verdict had been once pronounced, the prisoner was but as a fox about to
be thrown to the hounds.

And now there was a demand that this particular fox should be put back
into his covert! The Secretary of State could put him back, if he
thought fit. But in these matters there was so often a touch of
cowardice. Why did not the Secretary do it without asking him? There had
arisen no question of law. There was no question as to the propriety of
the verdict as found upon the evidence given at the trial. The doubt
which had arisen since had come fr