. I
never thought what it would be like to be away from them, I surely never
did; and I'm ashamed to be speaking it out like this--how it can squeeze
and squeeze a man, how it can prey on your mind, when you're nervous
like I am. 'Tis not everyone that cares for his home--there's lots o'
them never wants to see their wives again. But for me 'tis like being
shut up in a cage, it is!" Mr. Bosengate saw daylight between the skinny
fingers of the man's hand thrown out with a jerk. "I cannot bear it shut
up away from wife and home like what you are in the army. So when I took
my razor that morning I was wild--an' I wouldn't be here now but for
that man catching my hand. There was no reason in it, I'm willing to
confess. It was foolish; but wait till you get feeling like what I
was, and see how it draws you. Misters the jury, don't send me back to
prison; it is worse still there. If you have wives you will know what it
is like for lots of us; only some is more nervous than others. I swear
to you, sirs, I could not help it---?" Again the little man flung out
his hand, his whole thin body shook and Mr. Bosengate felt the same
sensation as when he drove his car over a dog--"Misters the jury, I hope
you may never in your lives feel as I've been feeling."

The little man ceased, his eyes shrank back into their sockets, his
figure back into its mask of shadowy brown and gleaming buttons, and Mr.
Bosengate was conscious that the judge was making a series of remarks;
and, very soon, of being seated at a mahogany table in the jury's
withdrawing room, hearing the voice of the man with hair like an
Irish terrier's saying: "Didn't he talk through his hat, that little
blighter!" Conscious, too, of the commercial traveller, still on his
left--always on his left!--mopping his brow, and muttering: "Phew! It's
hot in there to-day!" while an effluvium, as of an inside accustomed
to whisky came from him. Then the man with the underlip and the three
plastered wisps of hair said:

"Don't know why we withdrew, Mr. Foreman!"

Mr. Bosengate looked round to where, at the head of the table, Gentleman
Fox sat, in defensive gentility and the little white piping to his
waistcoat saying blandly:

"I shall be happy to take the sense of the jury."

There was a short silence, then the chemist murmured:

"I should say he must have what they call claustrophobia."

"Clauster fiddlesticks! The feller's a shirker, that's all. Missed his
wife--pretty excus