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gave no judgment whatever upon the matter! I only wish that I had been the judge! But is there no appeal from this verdict? Would not a well-drawn-up protest have a very great effect?"

"We might move for a new trial, certainly."

"Then let us have a new trial: by all means let us have a new trial. That will be the very thing!"

"I fear that unless we have much stronger evidence to produce, a new trial—if we obtained it—would be worse than useless."

"But we have stronger evidence! My evidence might be stronger—much stronger—I am sure of it!"

The doctor shook his head, and having observed that that point had better be left to the lawyers, retired.

How often men know what they ought to have said when the occasion for saying it is passed! How forcible—how eloquent in public, reflec- tion proves that they might have been! The reverend gentleman had much afterwit. He saw, on reflection, invariably—for reflection invari- ably came when he had spoken—that he had omitted to say much that he ought to have said, and that that which he did say, he might have said better. He was very seldom called upon to make a speech in public—his sermons required no subsequent reflection—but whenever he did make a public speech, the whole of the next day was devoted to its improvement. He would repeat it privately again and again, and polish every point he found in it, and if—as was sometimes the case—no point could be found, he would make one, and then polish that. He did on one occasion try a speech which he had written and learned by rote, but as he broke the thread in the middle and couldn't find the piece that came off, he abandoned that system—which is at best but a deceit—and stuck to the extemporaneous. Still, as he never made a speech which he did not subsequently very much improve, he never saw a speech of his in type which gave him the slightest satisfaction. There was always something said which ought to have been omitted, or something omitted which ought to have been said; and as his speeches, when in type, were never, in his judgment, what they ought to have been, the fact, that his evidence, when in type, gave him no sort of pleasure, cannot create much surprise. He was, indeed, exceedingly dissatisfied with it. He really felt ashamed of its appearance in print, and hence, being conscious—perfectly conscious—of his ability to give better evidence than that, he strongly urged the expediency of having a new trial.

By the advice of Mr. Scholefield, however, the idea of moving for a new trial was abandoned, and the reverend gentleman no sooner became cognisant of this than he went to work and conceived a scheme, of which the object was to settle the matter at once. He had a little money in the funds: he had, in fact, four thousand pounds in the three-and-a-half per cents; he therefore resolved on selling out to the extent required, and taking the two thousand pounds himself to Sir Charles Julian, unknown to any other living soul.

In this scheme "costs" were not contemplated: the idea of costs never occurred to him: he fondly imagined that Sir Charles would take the