er name, why should he not do so? If
he chose to marry a simple woman, and live in a suburb and paint
pictures at ten pounds each, why should he not do so? Why should he be
dragged out of his tranquillity because two persons in whom he felt no
interest whatever, had quarrelled over his pictures? Why should his life
have been made unbearable in Putney by the extravagant curiosity of a
mob of journalists? And then, why should he be compelled, by means of a
piece of blue paper, to go through the frightful ordeal and flame of
publicity in a witness-box? That was the crowning unmerited torture, the
unthinkable horror which had broken his sleep for many nights.

In the box he certainly had all the appearance of a trapped criminal,
with his nervous movements, his restless lowered eyes, and his faint,
hard voice that he could scarcely fetch up from his throat. Nervousness
lined with resentment forms excellent material for the plastic art of a
cross-examining counsel, and Pennington, K.C., itched to be at work.
Crepitude, K.C., Oxford's counsel, was in less joyous mood. Priam was
Crepitude's own witness, and yet a horrible witness, a witness who had
consistently and ferociously declined to open his mouth until he was in
the box. Assuredly he had nodded, in response to the whispered question
of the solicitor's clerk, but he had not confirmed the nod, nor breathed
a word of assistance during the three days of the trial. He had merely
sat there, blazing in silence.

"Your name is Priam Farll?" began Crepitude.

"It is," said Priam sullenly, and with all the external characteristics
of a liar. At intervals he glanced surreptitiously at the judge, as
though the judge had been a bomb with a lighted fuse.

The examination started badly, and it went from worse to worse. The idea
that this craven, prevaricating figure in the box could be the
illustrious, the world-renowned Priam Farll, seemed absurd. Crepitude
had to exercise all his self-control in order not to bully Priam.

"That is all," said Crepitude, after Priam had given his preposterous
and halting explanations of the strange phenomena of his life after the
death of Leek. None of these carried conviction. He merely said that the
woman Leek was mistaken in identifying him as her husband; he inferred
that she was hysterical; this inference alienated him from the audience
completely. His statement that he had no definite reason for pretending
to be Leek--that it was an impulse o