’I hope so.  You and Mr. Jones will prepare the statement for the Secretary of State, and I will send it myself.’  With that Mr. Bagwax took his leave, and remained closeted with Mr. Jones for much of the remainder of the day.

The moment Sir John was alone he wrote an almost angry note to his friend Honybun, in conjunction with whom and another Member of Parliament he had the shooting in Suffolk.  Honybun, who was also a lawyer, though less successful than his friend, was a much better shot, and was already taking the cream off the milk of the shooting.  ’I cannot conceive,’ he said at the end of his letter, ’that, after all my experience, I should have put myself so much out of my way to serve a client.  A man should do what he’s paid to do, and what it is presumed that he will do, and nothing more.  But here I have been instigated by an insane ambition to emulate the good-natured zeal of a fellow who is absolutely willing to sacrifice himself for the good of a stranger.’  Then he went on to say that he could not leave London till the Friday.

On the Thursday morning he put all the details together, and himself drew out a paper for the perusal of the Secretary of State.  As he looked at the matter all round, it seemed to him that the question was so clear that even Judge Bramber could not hesitate.  The evidence of Dick Shand was quite conclusive,—­if credible.  It was open, of course, to strong doubt, in that it could not be sifted by cross-examination.  Alone, it certainly would not have sufficed to extort a pardon from any Secretary of State,—­as any Secretary of State would have been alive to the fact that Dick might have been suborned.  Dick’s life had not been such that his single word would have been regarded as certainly true.  But in corroboration it was worth much.  And then if the Secretary or the judge could be got to go into that very complicated question of the dated stamp, it would, Sir John thought, become evident to him that the impression had not been made at the time indicated.  This had gradually been borne in upon Sir John’s mind, till he was almost as confident in his facts as Bagwax himself.  But this operation had required much time and much attention.  Would the Secretary, or would the judge, clear his table, and give himself time to inspect and to measure two or three hundred postmarks?  The date of the fabrication of the postage-stamp would of course require to be verified by official report;—­but if the facts as stated by Bagwax were thus confirmed, then the fraudulent nature of the envelope would be put beyond doubt.  It would be so manifest that this morsel of evidence had been falsely concocted, that no clear-headed man, let his prepossessions be what they might, could doubt it.  Judge Bramber would no doubt begin to sift the case with a strong bias in favour of the jury.  It was for a jury to ascertain the facts; and in this case the jury had done so.  In his opinion,—­in Judge Bramber’s opinion, as the judge had often