. The
account of Lucy and of Captain Clifford contained in the epistle
instilled, indeed, a double portion of sourness into the professionally
acrid mind of the lawyer; and as it so happened that he read the letter
just before attending the court upon a case in which he was counsel to
the crown, the witnesses on the opposite side of the question felt the
full effects of the barrister's ill humour. The case was one in which
the defendant had been engaged in swindling transactions to a very large
amount; and among his agents and assistants was a person of the very
lowest orders, but who, seemingly enjoying large connections, and
possessing natural acuteness and address, appeared to have been of
great use in receiving and disposing of such goods as were fraudulently
obtained. As a witness against the latter person appeared a pawnbroker,
who produced certain articles that had been pledged to him at different
times by this humble agent. Now, Brandon, in examining the guilty
go-between, became the more terribly severe in proportion as the man
evinced that semblance of unconscious stolidity which the lower orders
can so ingeniously assume, and which is so peculiarly adapted to enrage
and to baffle the gentlemen of the bar. At length, Brandon entirely
subduing and quelling the stubborn hypocrisy of the culprit, the man
turned towards him a look between wrath and beseechingness, muttering,--

"Aha! if so be, Counsellor Prandon, you knew vat I knows. You vould not
go for to bully I so!"

"And pray, my good fellow, what is it that you know that should make me
treat you as if I thought you an honest man?"

The witness had now relapsed into sullenness, and only answered by
a sort of grunt. Brandon, who knew well how to sting a witness
into communicativeness, continued his questioning till the witness,
re-aroused into anger, and it may be into indiscretion, said in a low
voice,--

"Hax Mr. Swoppem the pawnbroker what I sold 'im on the 15th hof
February, exactly twenty-three yearn ago." Brandon started back, his
lips grew white, he clenched his hands with a convulsive spasm; and
while all his features seemed distorted with an earnest yet fearful
intensity of expectation, he poured forth a volley of questions, so
incoherent and so irrelevant that he was immediately called to order
by his learned brother on the opposite side. Nothing further could be
extracted from the witness. The pawnbroker was resummoned: he appeared
somewhat di