imself!" "Egad" said his brother K.C.--yes, he
really _did_ say "Egad," the oath still lingers in the Inns of
Court--"Egad, he looks like one. No hair on his face and I'll lay he
doesn't shave."

There were of course other briefs he held, for payment or for love
of justice; young women who had killed their babies (as to these he
was far from sentimental; he only defended where the woman had any
claim to sympathy or mitigation of the unreal death sentence);
breach of promise actions where the woman had been grossly wronged;
affiliation cases in high life--or the nearest to high life that
makes a claim on the man for his fatherhood. He was a deadly
prosecutor in cases where women had been robbed by their male
trustees, or injured in any other way wherein, in those days, the
woman was at a disadvantage and the marriage laws were unjust.

One way and another, with the zealous aid and business-like care of
his interests by his clerk, Albert Adams, David must have earned
between 1906 and the autumn of 1908, an average Three hundred a
year. As he paid Adams L150 a year and allowed him certain
perquisites, and lived within his own fixed income (from his annuity
and investments) of L290 a year, this meant a profit of about L500.
This was raised at a leap to L1,500 by the fees and the special gift
he received for defending Lady Shillito.

The "Shillito Case," an indictment for murder, was tried at the
winter assize of the North-eastern Circuit, January or February,
1909. I dare say you have forgotten all about it now: Lady Shillito
changed her name, married again (eventually), and was lost in the
crowd--she may even, eleven years afterwards, be reading this novel
at the riper age of forty and be startled out of her well-fed apathy
by the revival of acute memories.

There have been not a few similar cases before and since of
comparatively young, beautiful women murdering their elderly,
objectionable husbands in a clever cattish way, and of course
getting off through lack of evidence or with a short term of
imprisonment. (They were always treated in prison far more tenderly
than were Suffragettes, and the average wardress adored them and
obtained for them many little alleviations of their lot before the
Home Secretary gave way and released them.) Nowadays the War and the
pressing necessities of life, the coal famine, the milk famine, the
railway strikes have robbed such cases of all or nearly all their
interest. I could quite