o the bottom.

"Volume Six of the _Law Reports_, m'lud."

"Page?" snaps PROSER.

"Page 184, m'lud. As I was saying, the Court there held that the right
to foreclose at any reasonable time is not taken away--"

This time the interruption comes from the Judge who I thought was
going mad, but who now seems to be preternaturally and offensively
sane.

"It would be odd," he observes, cuttingly, "if any Court _had_ decided
a point about mortgages in _Cookson versus Gedge_, because on looking
at the page to which you have referred us, find that _Cookson and
Gedge_ was _a running-down case_!"

I glance at the paper before me in consternation; another moment, and
the horrifying fact is revealed to me that the sheet of "authorities"
I have brought with me bears, not on the mortgage case now before the
Court, but on that previous six-guinea matter on which I had given
ROGERS & Co. my valuable Opinion gratis.

I hear DICK FIBBINS, in this trying position, with the eyes of three
Judges fixed on him, swearing at me under his breath in the most awful
manner. But why did he depend on _me_? Why didn't he get up the case
himself?

Deprived at one blow of most of his precedents, "shorn"--as the Breach
of Promise Reports puts it--"of its usual attractions," FIBBINS's
speech becomes an impotent affair. He has to quote such cases as he
can remember, and as neither his memory nor his legal knowledge is
great, he presents them all wrongly, and prematurely sits down. I
see PROSER's wrinkled countenance illumined with an exultant smile.
Just as I am moving out of Court (FIBBINS has to "move" _in_ Court),
because I am desirous of avoiding FIBBINS's wrath,--though I feel that
this _fiasco_ is more his fault than mine,--I hear the presiding judge
(the mad one) say to the Defendant's Counsel that he need not trouble
to address them. I know what _that_ means--judgment for the Defendant!

Chancing half-an-hour later to enter a Strand Restaurant, part of
which, I regret to say, is also a drinking-bar, I am startled at
beholding the identical form and features of FIBBINS himself. He
appears flushed--has two companions with him, to whom he is talking
excitedly. I hear the words--"idiot"--"jackass of a pupil"--"regular
sell"--and; but no, perhaps I had better not repeat all that I _did_
hear. I decide to seek refreshment elsewhere.

Over the subsequent scene in FIBBINS's Chambers I prefer to draw a
veil. It is sufficient to say that I was obl