hear his first question,--"I believe you are an
Under-Secretary of State?" Lord Fawn acknowledged the fact. Now it
was the case that in the palmy days of our hero's former career he
had filled the very office which Lord Fawn now occupied, and that
Lord Fawn had at the time filled a similar position in another
department. These facts Mr. Chaffanbrass extracted from his
witness,--not without an appearance of unwillingness, which was
produced, however, altogether by the natural antagonism of the
victim to his persecutor; for Mr. Chaffanbrass, even when asking the
simplest questions, in the simplest words, even when abstaining from
that sarcasm of tone under which witnesses were wont to feel that
they were being flayed alive, could so look at a man as to create an
antagonism which no witness could conceal. In asking a man his name,
and age, and calling, he could produce an impression that the man
was unwilling to tell anything, and that, therefore, the jury were
entitled to regard his evidence with suspicion. "Then," continued Mr.
Chaffanbrass, "you must have met him frequently in the intercourse of
your business?"

"I suppose I did,--sometimes."

"Sometimes? You belonged to the same party?"

"We didn't sit in the same House."

"I know that, my lord. I know very well what House you sat in. But I
suppose you would condescend to be acquainted with even a commoner
who held the very office which you hold now. You belonged to the same
club with him."

"I don't go much to the clubs," said Lord Fawn.

"But the quarrel of which we have heard so much took place at a
club in your presence?" Lord Fawn assented. "In fact you cannot but
have been intimately and accurately acquainted with the personal
appearance of the gentleman who is now on his trial. Is that so?"

"I never was intimate with him."

Mr. Chaffanbrass looked up at the jury and shook his head sadly.
"I am not presuming, Lord Fawn, that you so far derogated as to be
intimate with this gentleman,--as to whom, however, I shall be able
to show by and by that he was the chosen friend of the very man under
whose mastership you now serve. I ask whether his appearance is not
familiar to you?" Lord Fawn at last said that it was. "Do you know
his height? What should you say was his height?" Lord Fawn altogether
refused to give an opinion on such a subject, but acknowledged that
he should not be surprised if he were told that Mr. Finn was over six
feet high. "In fact you