The clerk had made his way into the book-room in which Cousin Henry was sitting, and stood there over him while he was reading the letter. He felt sure that it had been arranged by Mr. Apjohn that it should be so, in order that he might not have a moment to consider the reply which he would send. Mr. Apjohn had calculated, traitor that he was to the cause of his client—so thought Cousin Henry—that the man’s presence would rob him of his presence of mind so as to prevent him from sending a refusal.
“I don’t see why I should go into Carmarthen at all,” he said.
“Oh, sir, it’s quite essential—altogether essential in a case such as this. You are bound to prosecute, and of course you must give your instructions. If Mr. Apjohn were to bring everything out here for the purpose, the expense would be tremendous. In going there, it will only be the fly, and it will all be done in five minutes.”
“Who will be there?” asked Cousin Henry after a pause.
“I shall be there,” answered the clerk, not unnaturally putting himself first, “and Mr. Apjohn, and perhaps one of the lads.”
“There won’t be any—barrister?” asked Cousin Henry, showing the extent of his fear by his voice and his countenance.
“Oh, dear, no; they won’t be here till the assizes. A barrister never sees his own client. You’ll go in as a witness, and will have nothing to do with the barristers till you’re put up face to face before them in the witness-box. Mr. Balsam is a very mild gentleman.”
“He is employed by me?”
“Oh, yes; he’s on our side. His own side never matters much to a witness. It’s when the other side tackles you!”
“Who is the other side?” asked Cousin Henry.
“Haven’t you heard?” The voice in which this was said struck terror to the poor wretch’s soul. There was awe in it and pity, and something almost of advice—as though the voice were warning him to prepare against the evil which was threatening him. “They have got Mr. Cheekey!” Here the voice became even more awful. “I knew they would when I first heard what the case was to be. They’ve got Mr. Cheekey. They don’t care much about money when they’re going it like that. There are many of them I have known awful enough, but he’s the awfullest.”
“He can’t eat a fellow,” said Cousin Henry, trying to look like a man with good average courage.
“No; he can’t eat a fellow. It isn’t that way he does it. I’ve known some of ’em who looked as though they were going to eat a man; but he looks as though he were going to skin you, and leave you bare for the birds to eat you. He’s gentle enough at first, is Mr. Cheekey.”
“What is it all to me?” asked Cousin Henry.
“Oh, nothing, sir. To a gentleman like you who knows what he’s about it’s all nothing. What can Mr. Cheekey do to a gentleman who has got nothing to conceal? But when a witness has something to hide—and sometimes there will be something—then it is that Mr. Cheekey comes out strong. He looks into a man and sees that it’s there, and then he turns him inside out till he gets at it. That’s what I call skinning a witness. I saw a poor fellow once so knocked about by Mr. Cheekey that they had to carry him down speechless out of the witness-box.”
It was a vivid description of all that Cousin Henry had pictured to himself. And he had actually, by his own act, subjected himself to this process! Had he been staunch in refusing to bring any action against the newspaper, Mr. Cheekey would have been powerless in reference to him. And now he was summoned into Carmarthen to prepare himself by minor preliminary pangs for the torture of the auto-da-fé which was to be made of him.
“I don’t see why I should go into Carmarthen at all,” he said, having paused a while after the eloquent description of the barrister’s powers.
“Not come into Carmarthen! Why, sir, you must complete the instructions.”
“I don’t see it at all.”
“Then do you mean to back out of it altogether, Mr. Jones? I wouldn’t be afeared by Mr. Cheekey like that!”
Then it occurred to him that if he did mean to back out of it altogether he could do so better at a later period, when they might hardly be able to catch him by force and bring him as a prisoner before the dreaded tribunal. And as it was his purpose to avoid the trial by giving up the will, which he would pretend to have found at the moment of giving it up, he would ruin his own project—as he had done so many projects before—by his imbecility at the present moment. Cheekey would not be there in Mr. Apjohn’s office, nor the judge and jury and all the crowd of the court to look at him.
“I don’t mean to back out at all,” he said; “and it’s very impertinent of you to say so.”
“I didn’t mean impertinence, Mr. Jones;—only it is necessary you should come into Mr. Apjohn’s office.”
“Very well; I’ll come tomorrow at three.”
“And about the fly, Mr. Jones?”
“I can come in my own carriage.”
“Of course. That’s what Mr. Apjohn said. But if I may make so bold, Mr. Jones—wouldn’t all the people in Carmarthen know the old Squire’s carriage?”
Here was another trouble. Yes; all the people in Carmarthen would know the old Squire’s carriage, and after all those passages in the newspapers—believing, as he knew they did, that he had stolen the property—would clamber up on the very wheels to look at him! The clerk had been right in that.
“I don’t mean it for
