teeth discoloured through constant smoking. His fingers, too,
bore the tell-tale yellow stains.

"Mr. Ledsam," he said, "I think, with your permission, I should like to
leave at the end of my next three months."

Francis glanced across at him.

"Sorry to hear that, Fawsitt. Are you going to work for any one else?"

"I haven't made arrangements yet, sir," the young man replied. "I
thought of offering myself to Mr. Barnes."

"Why do you want to leave me?" Francis asked.

"There isn't enough for me to do, sir."

Francis lit his pipe.

"It's probably just a lull, Fawsitt," he remarked.

"I don't think so, sir."

"The devil! You've been gossiping with some of these solicitors' clerks,
Fawsitt."

"I shouldn't call it gossiping, sir. I am always interested to hear
anything that may concern our--my future. I have reason to believe, sir,
that we are being passed over for briefs."

"The reason being?"

"One can't pick and choose, sir. One shouldn't, anyway."

Francis smiled.

"You evidently don't approve of any measure of personal choice as to the
work which one takes up."

"Certainly I do not, sir, in our profession. The only brief I would
refuse would be a losing or an ill-paid one. I don't conceive it to be
our business to prejudge a case."

"I see," Francis murmured. "Go on, Fawsitt."

"There's a rumour about," the young man continued, "that you are only
going to plead where the chances are that your client is innocent."

"There's some truth in that," Francis admitted.

"If I could leave a little before the three months, sir, I should be
glad," Fawsitt said. "I look at the matter from an entirely different
point of view."

"You shall leave when you like, of course, Fawsitt, but tell me what
that point of view is?"

"Just this, sir. The simplest-minded idiot who ever stammered through
his address, can get an innocent prisoner off if he knows enough of the
facts and the law. To my mind, the real triumph in our profession is to
be able to unwind the meshes of damning facts and force a verdict for an
indubitably guilty client."

"How does the moral side of that appeal to you?" his senior enquired.

"I didn't become a barrister to study morals, or even to consider them,"
was the somewhat caustic reply. "When once a brief is in my mind, it is
a matter of brain, cunning and resource. The guiltier a man, the greater
the success if you can get him off."

"And turn him loose again upon Society?"

"It