Here his lordship paused for a considerable time, unable to suppress his emotion, but, having recovered himself, continued,—­

“But you must consider what my feelings would be when I thought I had hanged an innocent man!”

At the next assizes the man was brought up, the material witness appeared; the prisoner was found guilty, and hanged.

The humane judge’s feelings were therefore spared.

At the Old Bailey he was presiding during a sessions which was rather light for the times, there being less than a score left for execution under sentence of death.  There were, in fact, only sixteen, most of them for petty thefts.

His lordship, instead of reading the whole of the sixteen names, omitted one, and read out only fifteen.  He then politely, and with exquisite precision and solemnity, exhorted them severally to prepare for the awful doom that awaited them the following Monday, and pronounced on each the sentence of death.

They left the dock.

After they were gone the jailer explained to his lordship that there had been sixteen prisoners capitally convicted, but that his lordship had omitted the name of one of them, and he would like to know what was to be done with him.

“What is the prisoner’s name?” asked Graham.

“John Robins, my lord.”

“Oh, bring John Robins back—­by all means let John Robins step forward.  I am obliged to you.”

The culprit was once more placed at the Bar, and Graham, addressing him in his singularly courteous manner, said apologetically,—­

“John Robins, I find I have accidentally omitted your name in my list of prisoners doomed to execution.  It was quite accidental, I assure you, and I ask your pardon for my mistake.  I am very sorry, and can only add that you will be hanged with the rest.”

CHAPTER XIII.

GLORIOUS OLD DAYS—­THE HON.  BOB GRIMSTON, AND MANY
OTHERS—­CHICKEN-HAZARD.

The old glories of the circuit days vanished with stage-coaches and post-chaises.  If you climbed on to the former for the sake of economy because you could not afford to travel in the latter, you would be fined at the circuit mess, whose notions of propriety and economy were always at variance.

Those who obtained no business found it particularly hateful to keep up the foolish appearance of having it by means of a post-chaise.  You might not ride in a public vehicle, or dine at a public table, or put up at an inn for fear of falling in with attorneys and obtaining briefs from them surreptitiously.  The Home Circuit was very strict in these respects, but it was the cheapest circuit to travel in the kingdom, so that its members were numerous and, I need not say, various in mind, manner, and position.

But it was a circuit of brilliant men in my young days.  Many of them rose to eminence both in law and in Parliament.  It was a time, indeed, when, if judges made law, law made judges.