counts in the indictment. He had pleaded guilty to embezzling a sum of
L4,875 odd. But the total amount of the defalcations, comprised in the
seventeen counts, was no less--it seemed a most amazing sum!--than
L221,573 8_s_. 6_d_.! There was the fact--the banking company had been
robbed of over two hundred thousand pounds by the prisoner in the dock
before a mere accident, the most trifling chance, had revealed to the
astounded directors that he was robbing them at all. And the most
serious feature of the whole case was that not one penny of this money
had been, or ever could be, recovered. He believed that the prisoner's
learned counsel was about to urge upon the Court that the prisoner
himself had been tricked and deceived by another man, unfortunately
not before the Court--a man, he understood, also well known in Market
Milcaster, who was now dead, and therefore could not be called, but
whether he was so tricked or deceived was no excuse for his clever and
wholesale robbing of his employers. He had thought it necessary to put
these facts--which would not be denied--before the Court, in order
that it might be known how heavy the defalcations really had been, and
that they should be considered in dealing with the prisoner.

"The Recorder asked if there was no possibility of recovering any part
of the vast sum concerned.

"Mr. Stephens replied that they were informed that there was not the
remotest chance--the money, it was said by prisoner and those acting
on his behalf, had utterly vanished with the death of the man to whom
he had just made reference.

"Mr. Doolittle, on behalf of the prisoner, craved to address a few
words to the Court in mitigation of sentence. He thanked Mr. Stephens
for the considerate and eminently dispassionate manner in which he had
outlined the main facts of the case. He had no desire to minimize the
prisoner's guilt. But, on prisoner's behalf, he desired to tell the
true story as to how these things came to be. Until as recently as
three years previously the prisoner had never made the slightest
deviation from the straight path of integrity. Unfortunately for him,
and, he believed, for some others in Market Milcaster, there came to
the town three years before the present proceedings, a man named
Chamberlayne, who commenced business in the High Street as a
stock-and-share broker. A man of good address and the most plausible
manners, Chamberlayne attracted a good many people--amongst them his