lerk--."--"Yessir,"
continued the thief; "but I thought I'd like to make sure you'd attend
yourself, sir; we're anxious, 'cos it's little Ben, our youngest
kid."--"Oh! that will be all right. Give Simmons the fee."--"Well, sir,"
continued the man, shifting about uneasily, "I was going to arst you,
sir, to take a little less. You see, sir (wheedlingly), it's little
Ben--his first misfortin'."--"No, no," said the counsel impatiently.
"Clear out!"--"But, sir, you've 'ad all our business. Well, sir, if you
won't, you won't, so I'll pay you now, sir." And as he doled out the
guineas: "I may as well tell you, sir, you wouldn't 'a' got the
'couties' if I 'adn't 'ad a little bit o' luck on the way."

The gravity of the Court of Appeal was once seriously disturbed by
Edward Bullen reading to them the following paragraph from a pleading in
an action for seduction: "The defendant denies that he is the father of
the said twins, _or of either of them_." This he apologetically
explained was due to an accident in his pupil-room, but everyone
recognised the style of the master-hand.

* * * * *

Serjeant Adams, who acted as assistant judge at the sessions, had a very
pleasant wit, and knew how to deal with any counsel who took to
"high-falutin." On one occasion, after an altercation with the judge,
the counsel for the prisoner in his address to the jury reminded them
that "they were the great palladium of British Liberty--that it was
_their_ province to deal with the facts, the _judge_ with the law--that
they formed one of the great institutions of their country, and that
they came in with William the Conqueror." Adams at the end of his
summing up said: "Gentlemen, you will want to retire to consider your
verdict, and as it seems you came in with the Conqueror you can now go
out with the beadle."

There was always a mystery how Edwin James, who at the Bar was earning
an income of at least L10,000 a year, was continually in monetary
difficulties. Like Sir Thomas Lawrence, he must have had some private
drain on his resources which was never disclosed. Among others who
suffered was the landlord of his chambers, whose rent was very much in
arrear. In the end the landlord hit upon a plan to discover which would
be the best method of recovering his rent, and one day asked James to
advise him on a legal matter in which he was interested, and thereupon
drew up a statement of his grievance against his own tenan