s been no new stamp
brought into use. There isn't one, either, that is exactly the Caldigate
breadth. I've brought a rule by which you can get to the fiftieth of an
inch.' Here Bagwax brought out a little ivory instrument marked all over
with figures. 'Of course they're intended to be of the same pattern. But
gradually, very gradually, the circle has always become smaller. Isn't
that conclusive? The Caldigate impression is a little, very
little--ever so little--but a little smaller than any of the Mays '73.
Isn't that conclusive?'

'If I understand it, Mr. Bagwax, you don't pretend to say that you have
got impressions of all the stamps which may have been in use in the
Sydney office at that time? But in Sydney, if I understand the matter
rightly, they keep daily impressions of all the stamps in a book.'

'Just so--just so, Sir John,' said Bagwax, feeling that every word
spoken to the lawyer renewed his own hopes of going out to Sydney,--but
feeling also that Sir John would be wrong, very wrong, if he subjected
his client to so unnecessarily prolonged a detention in the Cambridge
county prison. 'They do keep a book which would be quite conclusive. I
could have the pages photographed.'

'Would not that be best? and you might probably find out who it was who
gave this fraudulent aid.'

'I could find out everything,' said Bagwax, energetically; 'but----'

'But what?'

'It is all found out there. It is indeed, Sir John. If I could get you
to go along with me, you would see that that letter couldn't have gone
through the Sydney post-office.'

'I think I do see it. But it is so difficult, Mr. Bagwax, to make others
see things.'

'And if it didn't,--and it never did;--but if it didn't, why did they
say it did? Why did they swear it did? Isn't that enough to make any
Secretary let him go?'

The energy, the zeal, the true faith of the man, were admirable. Sir
John was half disposed to rise from his seat to embrace the man, and
hail him as his brother,--only that had he done so he would have made
himself as ridiculous as Bagwax. Zeal is always ridiculous. 'I think I
see it all,' he said.

'And won't they let the man go?'

'There were four persons who swore positively that they were present at
the marriage, one of them being the woman who is said to have been
married. That is direct evidence. With all our search, we have hitherto
found no one to give us any direct evidence to rebut this. Then they
brought forward, to