ly by junior members. The senior members
were able to make full use of the long vacation, spending it at health
resorts or in the country, but the incomes of the young shoots of the
great parasitical profession did not permit them to enjoy more than a
brief holiday out of town. Of course it would never have done for them
to admit even to each other that they could not afford to go away for an
extended holiday, and therefore they told one another in bored tones
that they had not been able to make up their minds where to go. The
junior bar included old men, who, through lack of influence, want of
energy, want of advertisement, want of ability, or some other
deficiency, had never earned more than a few guineas at their
profession, though they had spent year after year in chambers. They
lived on scanty private means. Broken in spirit they had even ceased to
attend the courts in order to study the methods and learn the tricks of
successful counsel. But the murder of a High Court judge was a thing
which stirred even their sluggish blood, and in the hope of some
sensational development they had put on faded silk hats and shabby black
suits and gone out to Hampstead to attend the inquest.

The interest of the junior bar in the crime was as personal as that of
the members of the Judicial Bench, though it manifested itself in an
entirely different direction. They speculated among themselves as to who
would be appointed to the vacancy on the High Court Bench. A leading K.C.
with a political pull would of course be selected by the
Attorney-General, but there were several K.C.'s who possessed these
qualifications, and therefore there was room for differences of opinion
among the junior bar as to who would get the offer. The point on which
they were all united was that vacancies of the High Court Bench were a
good thing for the bar as a whole, for they removed leading K.C.'s, and
the dispersion of their practice was like rain on parched ground.
Metaphorically speaking, every one--including even the junior bar--had
the chance of getting a shove up when a leading K.C. accepted a judicial
appointment. Some of the more irreverent spirits among the junior bar, in
drawing attention to the fact that Sir Horace Fewbanks had been one of
the youngest members of the High Court Bench, expressed the hope that the
shock of his death would be felt by some of the extremely aged members of
the bench who were too infirm in health to be able to stand ma