s hands.

It would be useless to follow the details of this remarkable will suit,
which lasted two days, and attracted much attention. Geoffrey won it and
won it triumphantly. His address to the jury on the whole case was
long remembered in the courts, rising as it did to a very high level of
forensic eloquence. Few who saw it ever forgot the sight of his handsome
face and commanding presence as he crushed the case of his opponents
like an eggshell, and then with calm and overwhelming force denounced
the woman who with her lover had concocted the cruel plot that robbed
her uncle of life and her cousins of their property, till at the last,
pointing towards her with outstretched hand, he branded her to the jury
as a murderess.

Few in that crowded court have forgotten the tragic scene that followed,
when the trembling woman, worn out by the long anxiety of the trial,
and utterly unnerved by her accuser's brilliant invective, rose from her
seat and cried:

"We did it--it is true that we did it to get the money, but we did not
mean to frighten him to death," and then fell fainting to the ground--or
Geoffrey Bingham's quiet words as he sat down:

"My lord and gentlemen of the jury, I do not think it necessary to carry
my case any further."

There was no applause, the occasion was too dramatically solemn, but the
impression made both upon the court and the outside public, to whom such
a scene is peculiarly fitted to appeal, was deep and lasting.

Geoffrey himself was under little delusion about the matter. He had no
conceit in his composition, but neither had he any false modesty. He
merely accepted the situation as really powerful men do accept such
events--with thankfulness, but without surprise. He had got his chance
at last, and like any other able man, whatever his walk of life, he had
risen to it. That was all. Most men get such chances in some shape or
form, and are unable to avail themselves of them. Geoffrey was one of
the exceptions; as Beatrice had said, he was born to succeed. As he sat
down, he knew that he was a made man.

And yet while he walked home that night, his ears still full of the
congratulations which had rained in on him from every quarter, he was
conscious of a certain pride. He will have felt as Geoffrey felt that
night, whose lot it has been to fight long and strenuously against
circumstances so adverse as to be almost overwhelming, knowing in his
heart that he was born to lead and not to f