“Can I have a word with you, Mr. Ledsam?” he asked.

“By all means,” was the prompt response.  “Sit down.”

Fawsitt seated himself on the other side of the table.  He had a long, thin face, dark, narrow eyes, unwholesome complexion, a slightly hooked nose, and teeth discoloured through constant smoking.  His fingers, too, bore the tell-tale yellow stains.

“Mr. Ledsam,” he said, “I think, with your permission, I should like to leave at the end of my next three months.”

Francis glanced across at him.

“Sorry to hear that, Fawsitt.  Are you going to work for any one else?”

“I haven’t made arrangements yet, sir,” the young man replied.  “I thought of offering myself to Mr. Barnes.”

“Why do you want to leave me?” Francis asked.

“There isn’t enough for me to do, sir.”

Francis lit his pipe.

“It’s probably just a lull, Fawsitt,” he remarked.

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“The devil!  You’ve been gossiping with some of these solicitors’ clerks, Fawsitt.”

“I shouldn’t call it gossiping, sir.  I am always interested to hear anything that may concern our—­my future.  I have reason to believe, sir, that we are being passed over for briefs.”

“The reason being?”

“One can’t pick and choose, sir.  One shouldn’t, anyway.”

Francis smiled.

“You evidently don’t approve of any measure of personal choice as to the work which one takes up.”

“Certainly I do not, sir, in our profession.  The only brief I would refuse would be a losing or an ill-paid one.  I don’t conceive it to be our business to prejudge a case.”

“I see,” Francis murmured.  “Go on, Fawsitt.”

“There’s a rumour about,” the young man continued, “that you are only going to plead where the chances are that your client is innocent.”

“There’s some truth in that,” Francis admitted.

“If I could leave a little before the three months, sir, I should be glad,” Fawsitt said.  “I look at the matter from an entirely different point of view.”

“You shall leave when you like, of course, Fawsitt, but tell me what that point of view is?”

“Just this, sir.  The simplest-minded idiot who ever stammered through his address, can get an innocent prisoner off if he knows enough of the facts and the law.  To my mind, the real triumph in our profession is to be able to unwind the meshes of damning facts and force a verdict for an indubitably guilty client.”

“How does the moral side of that appeal to you?” his senior enquired.

“I didn’t become a barrister to study morals, or even to consider them,” was the somewhat caustic reply.  “When once a brief is in my mind, it is a matter of brain, cunning and resource.  The guiltier a man, the greater the success if you can get him off.”

“And turn him loose again upon Society?”