two marvellous stories was
now to be told.

The personage who had handed the three batches of letters to the
newspaper, told the Court how he had in 1885 compiled a pamphlet called
_Parnellism Unmasked_, partly from materials communicated to him by a
certain broken-down Irish journalist. To this unfortunate sinner, then in
a state of penury little short of destitution, he betook himself one
winter night in Dublin at the end of 1885. Long after, when the game was
up and the whole sordid tragi-comedy laid bare, the poor wretch wrote: "I
have been in difficulties and great distress for want of money for the
last twenty years, and in order to find means of support for myself and my
large family, I have been guilty of many acts which must for ever disgrace
me."(256) He had now within reach a guinea a day, and much besides, if he
would endeavour to find any documents that might be available to sustain
the charges made in the pamphlet. After some hesitation the bargain was
struck, a guinea a day, hotel and travelling expenses, and a round price
for documents. Within a few months the needy man in clover pocketed many
hundreds of pounds. Only the author of the history of _Jonathan Wild the
Great_ could do justice to such a story of the Vagabond in Luck--a jaunt to
Lausanne, a trip across the Atlantic, incessant journeys backward and
forward to Paris, the jingling of guineas, the rustle of hundred-pound
notes, and now and then perhaps a humorous thought of simple and solemn
people in newspaper offices in London, or a moment's meditation on that
perplexing law of human affairs by which the weak things (M146) of the
world are chosen to confound the things that are mighty.

The moment came for delivering the documents in Paris, and delivered they
were with details more grotesque than anything since the foolish baronet
in Scott's novel was taken by Dousterswivel to find the buried treasure in
Saint Ruth's. From first to last not a test or check was applied by
anybody to hinder the fabrication from running its course without a hitch
or a crease. When men have the demon of a fixed idea in their cerebral
convolutions, they easily fall victims to a devastating credulity, and the
victims were now radiant as, with microscope and calligraphic expert by
their side, they fondly gazed upon their prize. About the time when the
judges were getting to work, clouds arose on this smiling horizon. It is
good, says the old Greek, that men should carr