A few there were who
were as yet hungry for briefs and could not get them, but who deemed it
a privilege and an honour to be invited to dine with their more
successful brethren.

Perhaps there is no profession in the land which offer greater
possibilities than that of the Bar. On the other hand, there is no
calling more fraught with disappointment. Many there are who, after a
brilliant University career, and having adopted the Bar as a
profession, have to wait year after year without even earning the
salary of a four-loom weaver. Proud, sensitive men as some of them
are, to have to wait around on the chance of getting a brief must be
exquisite torture. Yet such are the chances of the Bar that many
undergo the ordeal in the hope that by and by success will come. There
were some of these at the gathering which I have just mentioned. They
had accepted the invitation to dine with their successful brethren, not
without hope that some crumbs might fall from the rich man's table and
be enjoyed by them. Added to this, Judge Bolitho, who had won such
renown while practising as a barrister on the Northern Circuit, and now
appointed judge at the High Court of Justice, was also present. Some
of the younger men regarded him with a certain amount of awe, and they
wondered whether the time would come when they, who now depended upon
the goodwill of their friends, might aspire to the heights which he had
reached. After all, it was not impossible, for the Bar, like every
other profession, was a gamble.

It had been a merry gathering. They had dined well. The hotel was
noted for its cuisine and for the quality of its wines, and the best
which the great establishment afforded had been placed at their
disposal. Many good stories were told. Those who were now at the top
of the tree related incidents of their younger days, when they, like
the young fellows who now listened to them so eagerly, were hungry for
briefs. Mr. Bakewell, in particular, the man who that day was the
counsel for the prosecution in Paul Stepaside's case, was an utterly
different man from what he had been when he appeared in court. Then he
was solemn, pompous, and almost lugubrious; now he cracked a joke with
the best, and told humorous stories with infinite gusto. The judge,
too, while naturally patronising and unable to throw aside in entirety
the dignity of his office, so far unbent as to be the best of
companions.

Naturally, the case which had