It was abhorrent to his nature,—­not that a guilty man should escape, which he knew to be an affair occurring every day,—­but that a guilty man, who had been found to be guilty, should creep back through the meshes of the law.  He knew how many chances were given by the practice of British courts to an offender on his trial, and he was quite in favour of those chances.  He would be urgent in telling a jury to give the prisoner the benefit of a doubt.  But when the transgressor, with all those loopholes stopped, stood before him convicted, then he felt a delight in the tightness of the grip with which he held the wretch, and would tell himself that the world in which he lived was not as yet all astray, in that a guilty man could still be made to endure the proper reward of his guilt.

It was with him as when a hunter has hunted a fox after the approved laws of venery.  There have been a dozen ways of killing the animal of which he has scorned to avail himself.  He has been careful to let him break from his covert, regarding all who would stop him as enemies to himself.  It has been a point of honour with him that the animal should suffer no undue impediment.  Any ill-treatment shown to the favoured one in his course, is an injury done to the hunter himself.  Let no man head the fox, let no man strive to drive him back upon the hounds.  Let all be done by hunting law,—­in accordance with those laws which give so many chances of escape.  But when the hounds have run into their quarry, not all the eloquence of all the gods should serve to save that doomed one’s life.

So it was with Judge Bramber and a convicted prisoner.  He would give the man the full benefit of every quibble of the law till he was convicted.  He would be severe on witnesses, harsh to the police, apparently a very friend to the man standing at the bar,—­till the time came for him to array the evidence before the jury.  Then he was inexorable; and when the verdict had been once pronounced, the prisoner was but as a fox about to be thrown to the hounds.

And now there was a demand that this particular fox should be put back into his covert!  The Secretary of State could put him back, if he thought fit.  But in these matters there was so often a touch of cowardice.  Why did not the Secretary do it without asking him?  There had arisen no question of law.  There was no question as to the propriety of the verdict as found upon the evidence given at the trial.  The doubt which had arisen since had come from further evidence, of which the Secretary was as well able to judge as he.  No doubt the case was difficult.  There had been gross misdoing on both sides.  But if Caldigate had not married the woman, why had he paid those twenty thousands?  Why had he written those words on the envelope?  There was doubt enough now, but the time for giving the prisoner the benefit of the doubt was gone.  The fox had been fairly hunted, and Judge Bramber thought that he had better die.