e rest of this job-lot. He
had an impulse to get up and walk out, saying: "Settle it your own way.
Good morning."

"It seems, sir," Gentleman Fox was saying, "that we're all agreed to
guilty, except yourself. If you will allow me, I don't see how you can
go behind what the prisoner himself admitted."

Thus brought up to the very guns, Mr. Bosengate, red in the face, thrust
his hands deep into the side pockets of his tunic, and, staring straight
before him, said:

"Very well; on condition we recommend him to mercy."

"What do you say, gentlemen; shall we recommend him to mercy?"

"'Ear, 'ear!" burst from the commercial traveller, and from the chemist
came the murmur:

"No harm in that."

"Well, I think there is. They shoot deserters at the front, and we let
this fellow off. I'd hang the cur."

Mr. Bosengate stared at that little wire-haired brute. "Haven't you any
feeling for others?" he wanted to say. "Can't you see that this poor
devil suffers tortures?" But the sheer impossibility of doing this
before ten other men brought a slight sweat out on his face and hands;
and in agitation he smote the table a blow with his fist. The effect was
instantaneous. Everybody looked at the wire-haired man, as if saying:
"Yes, you've gone a bit too far there!" The "little brute" stood it for
a moment, then muttered surlily:

"Well, commend 'im to mercy if you like; I don't care."

"That's right; they never pay any attention to it," said the grey-haired
man, winking heartily. And Mr. Bosengate filed back with the others into
court.

But when from the jury box his eyes fell once more on the hare-eyed
figure in the dock, he had his worst moment yet. Why should this poor
wretch suffer so--for no fault, no fault; while he, and these others, and
that snapping counsel, and the Caesar-like judge up there, went off to
their women and their homes, blithe as bees, and probably never thought
of him again? And suddenly he was conscious of the judge's voice:

"You will go back to your regiment, and endeavour to serve your country
with better spirit. You may thank the jury that you are not sent to
prison, and your good fortune that you were not at the front when you
tried to commit this cowardly act. You are lucky to be alive."

A policeman pulled the little soldier by the arm; his drab figure with
eyes fixed and lustreless, passed down and away. From his very soul Mr.
Bosengate wanted to lean out and say: "Cheer up,