would be incapable of enthusiasm as to any case in which he was employed.  The ignorant childish world outside would indulge in zeal and hot feelings,—­but for an advocate to do so was to show that he was no lawyer,—­that he was no better than the outside world.  Even spoken eloquence was, in his mind, almost beneath a lawyer,—­studied eloquence certainly was so.  But such written words as these disgusted him.  And then he came across allusions to the condition of the poor lady at Folking.  What could the condition of the lady at Folking have to do with the matter?  Though the poor lady at Folking should die in her sorrow, that could not alter the facts as they had occurred in Australia!  It was not for him, or for the Secretary of State, to endeavour to make things pleasant all round here in England.  It had been the jury’s duty to find out whether that crime had been committed, and his duty to see that all due facilities were given to the jury.  It had been Sir John Joram’s duty to make out what best case he could for his client,—­and then to rest contented.  Had all things been as they should be, the Secretary of State would have had no duty at all in the matter.  It was in this frame of mind that Judge Bramber applied himself to the consideration of the case.  No juster man ever lived;—­and yet in his mind there was a bias against the prisoner.

Nevertheless he went to his work with great patience, and a resolve to sift everything that was to be sifted.  The Secretary of State had done no more than his required duty in sending the case to him, and he would now do his.  He took the counter-evidence as it came in the papers.  In order that the two Bagwaxian theories, each founded on the same small document, might be expounded, one consecutively after the other, Dick Shand and his deposition were produced first.  The judge declared to himself that Dick’s single oath, which could not now be tested by cross-examination, amounted to nothing.  He had been a drunkard and a pauper,—­had descended to the lowest occupation which the country afforded, and had more than once nearly died from delirium tremens.  He had then come home penniless, and had—­produced his story.  If such evidence could avail to rescue a prisoner from his sentence, and to upset a verdict, what verdict or what sentence could stand?  Poor Dick’s sworn testimony, in Judge Bramber’s mind, told rather against Caldigate than for him.

Then came the postmarks,—­as to which the Bagwaxian theory was quite distinct from that as to the postage-stamp.  Here the judge found the facts to be somewhat complicated and mazy.  It was long before he could understand the full purport of the argument used, and even at last he hardly understood the whole of it.  But he could see nothing in it to justify him in upsetting the verdict;—­nothing even to convince him that the envelope had been fraudulently handled.  There was no evidence that such a dated stamp had not been in use at Sydney on the day named.  Copies from the records kept daily at Sydney,—­photographed copies,—­should have been submitted before that argument had been used.