—­And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication.  It was held to be sufficient evidence of malice in the testcase Sadgrove v.  Hole.  In my opinion an action might lie.

Six and eightpence, please.  Who wants your opinion?  Let us drink our pints in peace.  Gob, we won’t be let even do that much itself.

—­Well, good health, Jack, says Ned.

—­Good health, Ned, says J. J.

—–­There he is again, says Joe.

—­Where? says Alf.

And begob there he was passing the door with his books under his oxter and the wife beside him and Corny Kelleher with his wall eye looking in as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a secondhand coffin.

—­How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe.

—­Remanded, says J. J.

One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers saying he’d give a passage to Canada for twenty bob.  What?  Do you see any green in the white of my eye?  Course it was a bloody barney.  What?  Swindled them all, skivvies and badhachs from the county Meath, ay, and his own kidney too.  J. J. was telling us there was an ancient Hebrew Zaretsky or something weeping in the witnessbox with his hat on him, swearing by the holy Moses he was stuck for two quid.

—­Who tried the case? says Joe.

—­Recorder, says Ned.

—­Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes.

—­Heart as big as a lion, says Ned.  Tell him a tale of woe about arrears of rent and a sick wife and a squad of kids and, faith, he’ll dissolve in tears on the bench.

—­Ay, says Alf.  Reuben J was bloody lucky he didn’t clap him in the dock the other day for suing poor little Gumley that’s minding stones, for the corporation there near Butt bridge.

And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to cry: 

—­A most scandalous thing!  This poor hardworking man!  How many children?  Ten, did you say?

—­Yes, your worship.  And my wife has the typhoid.

—­And the wife with typhoid fever!  Scandalous!  Leave the court immediately, sir.  No, sir, I’ll make no order for payment.  How dare you, sir, come up before me and ask me to make an order!  A poor hardworking industrious man!  I dismiss the case.

And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and in the third week after the feastday of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first quarter, it came to pass that those learned judges repaired them to the halls of law.  There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber, gave his rede and master Justice Andrews, sitting without a jury in the probate court, weighed well and pondered the claim of the first chargeant upon the property in the matter of the will propounded and final testamentary