t would be well that the noble lord should be as near as
possible to the thing or person to be identified. He was afraid that
he must trouble the noble lord to come down from the Elysium of
the bench. Whereupon Lord Fawn descended, and was sworn in at the
witness-box.

His treatment from Sir Simon Slope was all that was due from a
Solicitor-General to a distinguished peer who was a member of
the same Government as himself. Sir Simon put his questions so
as almost to reassure the witness and very quickly,--only too
quickly,--obtained from him all the information that was needed on
the side of the prosecution. Lord Fawn, when he had left the club,
had seen both Mr. Bonteen and Mr. Finn preparing to follow him, but
he had gone alone, and had never seen Mr. Bonteen since. He walked
very slowly down into Curzon Street and Bolton Row, and when there,
as he was about to cross the road at the top of Clarges Street,--as
he believed, just as he was crossing the street,--he saw a man come
at a very fast pace out of the mews which runs into Bolton Row,
opposite to Clarges Street, and from thence hurry very quickly
towards the passage which separates the gardens of Devonshire and
Lansdowne Houses. It had already been proved that had Phineas Finn
retraced his steps after Erle and Fitzgibbon had turned their backs
upon him, his shortest and certainly most private way to the spot
on which Lord Fawn had seen the man would have been by the mews in
question. Lord Fawn went on to say that the man wore a grey coat,--as
far as he could judge it was such a coat as Sir Simon now showed him;
he could not at all identify the prisoner; he could not say whether
the man he had seen was as tall as the prisoner; he thought that as
far as he could judge, there was not much difference in the height.
He had not thought of Mr. Finn when he saw the man hurrying along,
nor had he troubled his mind about the man. That was the end of Lord
Fawn's evidence-in-chief, which he would gladly have prolonged to the
close of the day could he thereby have postponed the coming horrors
of his cross-examination. But there he was,--in the clutches of
the odious, dirty, little man, hating the little man, despising
him because he was dirty, and nothing better than an Old Bailey
barrister,--and yet fearing him with so intense a fear!

Mr. Chaffanbrass smiled at his victim, and for a moment was quite
soft with him,--as a cat is soft with a mouse. The reporters
could hardly