entleman had asked. The
phrase was misleading, and Mr. Bagwax was induced to say that it might
be so. But still his assurance would probably have had weight with the
jury but for the overstrained honesty of his companion. The judge had
admonished the jury that in reference to such a point they should use
their own common-sense rather than the opinion of such a man as Mr.
Bagwax. A man of ordinary common-sense would know how the mark made by a
die on a letter would be affected by the sort of manipulation to which
the letter bearing it would be subjected;--and so on. From all which it
came to pass that the judge was understood to have declared that that
special envelope might very well have passed in ordinary course through
the Sydney post-office.

But Samuel Bagwax was not a man to be put down by the injustice of
lawyers. He knew himself to have been ill-treated. He was confident that
no man alive was more competent than himself to form an opinion on such
a subject; and he was sure, quite sure,--perhaps a little too
sure,--that there had been some dishonesty with that envelope. And thus
he became a strong partisan of John Caldigate and of Mrs. John
Caldigate. If there had been tampering with that envelope, then the
whole thing was fraudulent, false, and the outcome of a base conspiracy.
Many points were present to his mind which the lawyers between them
would not allow him to explain properly to a jury. When had that die
been cut, by which so perfect an impression had been formed? If it could
be proved that it had been cut since the date it bore, then of course
the envelope would be fraudulent. But it was only in Sydney that this
could be ascertained. He was sure that a week's ordinary use would have
made the impression less perfect. Some letters must of course be
subjected to new dies, and this letter might in due course have been so
subjected. But it was more probable that a new stamp should have been
selected for a surreptitious purpose. All this could be ascertained by
the book of daily impressions kept in the Sydney post-office;--but
there had not been time to get this evidence from Sydney since this
question of the impression had been ventilated. It was he who had first
given importance to the envelope; and being a resolute and almost heroic
man, he was determined that no injustice on the part of a Crown
prosecutor, no darkness in a judge's mind, no want of intelligence in a
jury, should rob him of the delight of s