nearly the whole of the shares.  But he had to speak of the loss—­of the serious defalcations which Maitland had committed.  The prisoner had wisely pleaded guilty to the first count of the indictment.  But there were no less than seventeen counts in the indictment.  He had pleaded guilty to embezzling a sum of L4,875 odd.  But the total amount of the defalcations, comprised in the seventeen counts, was no less—­it seemed a most amazing sum!—­than L221,573 8_s_. 6_d_.!  There was the fact—­the banking company had been robbed of over two hundred thousand pounds by the prisoner in the dock before a mere accident, the most trifling chance, had revealed to the astounded directors that he was robbing them at all.  And the most serious feature of the whole case was that not one penny of this money had been, or ever could be, recovered.  He believed that the prisoner’s learned counsel was about to urge upon the Court that the prisoner himself had been tricked and deceived by another man, unfortunately not before the Court—­a man, he understood, also well known in Market Milcaster, who was now dead, and therefore could not be called, but whether he was so tricked or deceived was no excuse for his clever and wholesale robbing of his employers.  He had thought it necessary to put these facts—­which would not be denied—­before the Court, in order that it might be known how heavy the defalcations really had been, and that they should be considered in dealing with the prisoner.

“The Recorder asked if there was no possibility of recovering any part of the vast sum concerned.

“Mr. Stephens replied that they were informed that there was not the remotest chance—­the money, it was said by prisoner and those acting on his behalf, had utterly vanished with the death of the man to whom he had just made reference.

“Mr. Doolittle, on behalf of the prisoner, craved to address a few words to the Court in mitigation of sentence.  He thanked Mr. Stephens for the considerate and eminently dispassionate manner in which he had outlined the main facts of the case.  He had no desire to minimize the prisoner’s guilt.  But, on prisoner’s behalf, he desired to tell the true story as to how these things came to be.  Until as recently as three years previously the prisoner had never made the slightest deviation from the straight path of integrity.  Unfortunately for him, and, he believed, for some others in Market Milcaster, there came to the town three years before the present proceedings, a man named Chamberlayne, who commenced business in the High Street as a stock-and-share broker.  A man of good address and the most plausible manners, Chamberlayne attracted a good many people—­amongst them his unfortunate client.  It was matter of common knowledge that Chamberlayne had induced numerous persons in Market Milcaster to enter into financial transactions with him; it was matter of common repute that those transactions had not always turned out well for Chamberlayne’s clients.  Unhappily for himself, Maitland had great faith in Chamberlayne.  He had begun to have transactions with him in a large way; they had gone on and on in a large way until he was involved to vast amounts.  Believing thoroughly in Chamberlayne and his methods, he had entrusted him with very large sums of money.