tration]

On the morning when the case is to come into Court, DICK the
Brief-hunter, who has promised to take me there, seems nervous. Yet he
is still confident that, if "old PROSER" is the judge, he will "pull
the thing off." It will be, apparently, a case of "Pull FIBBINS, pull
PROSER."

In Court I occupy a seat just behind him, because--as he
observes--I've been "grinding away at the case, and know the subject
down to the ground"--which I don't think _he_ does. I therefore am to
act as his reserves, also as his prompter, and to supply him with the
names of cases which he has forgotten, and which he wishes to quote.
Rather a responsible position. Should feel more confidence in result
if FIBBINS had told me of this prompter arrangement before the very
morning when the trial comes on.

"Old PROSER," appears to my untutored gaze to be rather a dignified
occupant of the Bench. I don't know whether he cherishes any personal
or professional animosity against DICK FIBBINS, but directly the
latter opens his mouth to begin, PROSER seems inclined to jump down
it.

"A complicated case of foreclosure?" he growls. "You needn't tell us
that. All foreclosure cases are complicated. _I_ ever saw one yet that
wasn't."

FIBBINS goes along unimpeded for a minute or two, PROSER having thrown
himself back with an air of resigned inattention, one of the other
Judges taking furtive notes, and the third resting his elbows on his
desk, and his head on his elbows, and eyeing _me_ with a stony and
meaningless stare. Can he suddenly have gone mad?

I have no time to consider this interesting point, as FIBBINS is again
in difficulties about some precedent that he wants to quote, but which
he has forgotten, and turns sharply round on me, saying, in a fierce
whisper--

"What the doose _is_ that case?"

I look hurriedly down on the sheet of paper on which (as I fancy) I
have jotted down the authorities bearing on the subject, and reply,
also in a whisper--"_Cookson and Gedge_."

"The Court, m'luds," FIBBINS airily proceeds, as if he were indebted
entirely to his own memory for the information, "held in _Cookson and
Gedge_ that a mortgagor who desires to foreclose--"

"Where is the case you mention?" suddenly asks the Judge who was
staring at me a moment ago. He is now engaged in first looking at my
instructor suspiciously, and then at me, as if he thought that there
was some horrible secret between us, which he is determined to probe
t