went onto the David Granton incident. "When you offered
to amalgamate with Lord Craig-Ellachie," he asked, "had you or
had you not heard that a gold-bearing reef ran straight from your
concession into Lord Craig-Ellachie's, and that his portion of the
reef was by far the larger and more important?"

Charles wriggled again, and our counsel interposed; but Rhadamanth
was adamant. Charles had to allow it.

And so, too, with the incident of the Slump in Golcondas.
Unwillingly, shamefacedly, by torturing steps, Charles was compelled
to confess that he had sold out Golcondas--he, the Chairman of the
company, after repeated declarations to shareholders and others
that he would do no such thing--because he thought Professor
Schleiermacher had made diamonds worthless. He had endeavoured to
save himself by ruining his company. Charles tried to brazen it out
with remarks to the effect that business was business. "And fraud is
fraud," Rhadamanth added, in his pungent way.

"A man must protect himself," Charles burst out.

"At the expense of those who have put their trust in his honour and
integrity," the judge commented coldly.

After four mortal hours of it, all to the same effect, my respected
brother-in-law left the witness-box at last, wiping his brow and
biting his lip, with the very air of a culprit. His character had
received a most serious blow. While he stood in the witness-box all
the world had felt it was _he_ who was the accused and Colonel Clay
who was the prosecutor. He was convicted on his own evidence of
having tried to induce the supposed David Granton to sell his
father's interests into an enemy's hands, and of every other shady
trick into which his well-known business acuteness had unfortunately
hurried him during the course of his adventures. I had but one
consolation in my brother-in-law's misfortunes--and that was the
thought that a due sense of his own shortcomings might possibly make
him more lenient in the end to the trivial misdemeanours of a poor
beggar of a secretary!

_I_ was the next in the box. I do not desire to enlarge upon my own
achievements. I will draw a decent veil, indeed, over the painful
scene that ensued when I finished my evidence. I can only say I was
more cautious than Charles in my recognition of the photographs;
but I found myself particularly worried and harried over other
parts of my cross-examination. Especially was I shaken about that
misguided step I took in the matter of