rince, in
brand-new wig and gown, defending himself single-handed from wiles of
artful adventuress--why, you'll knock the jury as if with old boots!"

"Alack," said I, sorrowfully; "though I am quite competent to become the
stump orator at shortest notice, I do not see how I can enter my first
appearance until I have carefully instructed Misters RAM and JALPANYBHOY
in the evidence they are to give and leave untold, &c., and a week is
too scanty and fugitive a period for such preparations!"

"Nonsense and stuff!" he replies, "you will have a lot more than that,
since the week only applies to entering an appearance--which is a mere
farcical formality that old SID can perform in your place on his head."
At which I was greatly relieved.

But on arrival at Mr SMARTLE'S office in Chancery Lane, we were
disappointed to be informed, by a small, juvenile clerk, that he was
absent at Wimbledon on urgent professional affairs, and his return was
the unknown quantity. However, after waiting till close upon the hour of
tiffin, he unexpectedly turned up in a suit of knickerbockers, carrying
a long, narrow bag full of metal-headed rods, and although rather
adolescent than senile in physical appearance I was vastly impressed by
the offhanded cocksurety of his manner.

My friend HOWARD introduced me, and exhibited my doleful predicament in
the shell of a nut, whereupon Mr SMARTLE jauntily pronounced it to be
the common garden breach of promise, but that we had better all repair
to the First Avenue Hotel and lunch, and talk the affair over
afterwards.

Which we did in the smoking-room after lunch, with coffee, liqueurs, and
cigars, &c., for which I had to pay, as a Tommy Dod, and the odd man out
of pocket.

Mr SMARTLE, after listening attentively to my narrative, said that I
certainly seemed to him to have let myself into the deuced cavity of a
hole by so publicly proclaiming my engagement, but that my status as an
oriental foreigner, and the fact I had asserted--viz., that my promise
was extorted from me by compulsion and sheer physical funkiness--might
pull me through, unless the plaintiff were of superlative loveliness
(which, fortunately, is by no means the case).

He added, that we had better engage WITHERINGTON, Q.C., as he was
notoriously the crossest examiner at the Common Bar.

But to this I opposed the _sine qua non_ that I am to have the sole
control of my case in court, and reap the undivided _kudos_, assuring
him th