In Court I occupy a seat just behind him, because—­as he observes—­I’ve been “grinding away at the case, and know the subject down to the ground”—­which I don’t think he does.  I therefore am to act as his reserves, also as his prompter, and to supply him with the names of cases which he has forgotten, and which he wishes to quote.  Rather a responsible position.  Should feel more confidence in result if FIBBINS had told me of this prompter arrangement before the very morning when the trial comes on.

“Old PROSER,” appears to my untutored gaze to be rather a dignified occupant of the Bench.  I don’t know whether he cherishes any personal or professional animosity against DICK FIBBINS, but directly the latter opens his mouth to begin, PROSER seems inclined to jump down it.

“A complicated case of foreclosure?” he growls.  “You needn’t tell us that.  All foreclosure cases are complicated. I ever saw one yet that wasn’t.”

FIBBINS goes along unimpeded for a minute or two, PROSER having thrown himself back with an air of resigned inattention, one of the other Judges taking furtive notes, and the third resting his elbows on his desk, and his head on his elbows, and eyeing me with a stony and meaningless stare.  Can he suddenly have gone mad?

I have no time to consider this interesting point, as FIBBINS is again in difficulties about some precedent that he wants to quote, but which he has forgotten, and turns sharply round on me, saying, in a fierce whisper—­

“What the doose is that case?”

I look hurriedly down on the sheet of paper on which (as I fancy) I have jotted down the authorities bearing on the subject, and reply, also in a whisper—­“Cookson and Gedge.”

“The Court, m’luds,” FIBBINS airily proceeds, as if he were indebted entirely to his own memory for the information, “held in Cookson and Gedge that a mortgagor who desires to foreclose—­”

“Where is the case you mention?” suddenly asks the Judge who was staring at me a moment ago.  He is now engaged in first looking at my instructor suspiciously, and then at me, as if he thought that there was some horrible secret between us, which he is determined to probe to the bottom.

“Volume Six of the Law Reports, m’lud.”

“Page?” snaps PROSER.

“Page 184, m’lud.  As I was saying, the Court there held that the right to foreclose at any reasonable time is not taken away—­”

This time the interruption comes from the Judge who I thought was going mad, but who now seems to be preternaturally and offensively sane.

“It would be odd,” he observes, cuttingly, “if any Court had decided a point about mortgages in Cookson versus Gedge, because on looking at the page to which you have referred us, find that Cookson and Gedge was a running-down case!”

I glance at the paper before me in consternation; another moment, and the horrifying fact is revealed to me that the sheet of “authorities” I have brought with me bears, not on the mortgage case now before the Court, but on that previous six-guinea matter on which I had given ROGERS & Co. my valuable Opinion gratis.