Well, Mr. Bagwax, I’m glad that it’s only one envelope this time.’ This was said by Sir John Joram to the honest and energetic post-office clerk on the morning of Wednesday the 3d September, when the lawyer would have been among the partridges down in Suffolk but for the vicissitudes of John Caldigate’s case. It was hard upon Sir John, and went something against the grain with him. He was past the time of life at which men are enthusiastic as to the wrongs of others,— as was Bagwax; and had, in truth, much less to gain from the cause, or to expect, than Bagwax. He thought that the pertinacity of Bagwax, and the coming of Dick Shand at the moment of his holidays, were circumstances which justified the use of a little internal strong language,— such as he had occasionally used externally before he had become attorney-general. In fact he had — damned Dick Shand and Bagwax, and in doing so had considered that Jones his clerk was internal ‘I wish he had gone to Sydney a month ago,’ he said to Jones, But when Jones suggested that Bagwax might be sent to Sydney without further trouble, Sir John’s conscience pricked him. Not to be able to shoot a Suffolk partridge on the 1st of September was very cruel, but to be detained wrongfully in Cambridge jail was worse; and he was of opinion that such cruelty had been inflicted on Caldigate. On the Saturday Dick Shand had been with him. He had remained in town on the Monday and Tuesday by agreement with Mr. Seely. Early on the Tuesday intimation was given to him that Bagwax would come on the Wednesday with further evidence,— with evidence which should be positively conclusive. Bagwax had, in the meantime, been with his friend Smithers at the stamp-office, and was now fully prepared By the help of Smithers he had arrived at the fact that the postage-stamp had certainly been fabricated in 1874, some months after the date imprinted on the cover of the letter to which it was affixed.

‘No, Sir John;— only one this time. We needn’t move anything.’ All the chaos had been restored to its normal place, and looked as though it had never been moved since it was collected.

‘And we can prove that this queen’s-head did not exist before the 1st January, 1874.’

‘Here’s the deposition,’ said Bagwax, who, by his frequent intercourse with Mr. Jones, had become almost as good as a lawyer himself,—‘at least, it isn’t a deposition, of course,— because it’s not sworn.’

‘A statement of what can be proved on oath.’

‘Just that, Sir John. It’s Mr. Smithers! Mr. Smithers has been at the work for the last twenty years. I knew it just as well as he from the first, because I attend to these sort of things; but I thought it best to go to the fountain-head.’

‘Quite right.’

‘Sir John will want to hear it from the fountain-head I said to myself; and therefore I went to Smithers. Smithers is perhaps a little conceited, but his word is — gospel. In a matter of postage-stamps Smithers is gospel.’

Then Sir John read the statement; and though he may not have taken it for gospel, still to him it was credible. ‘It seems clear,’ he said.

‘Clear as the running stream,’ said Bagwax.

‘I should like to have all that gang up for perjury, Mr. Bagwax.’

‘So should I, Sir John;— so should I. When I think of that poor dear lady and her infant babe without a name, and that young father torn from his paternal acres and cast into a vile prison, my blood boils within my veins, and all my passion to see foreign climes fades into the distance.’

‘No foreign climes now, Mr. Bagwax.’

‘I suppose not, Sir John,’ said the hero, mournfully

‘Not if this be true.’

‘It’s gospel, Sir John;— gospel. They might send me out to set that office to rights. Things must be very wrong when they could get hold of a date-stamp and use it in that way. There must be one of the gang in the office.’

‘A bribe did it, I should say.’

‘I could find it out, Sir John. Let me alone for that. You could say that you have found me — quick-like in this matter;— couldn’t you, Sir John?’ Bagwax was truly happy in the love of Jemima Curlydown but the idea of earning two hundred pounds for furniture, and of seeing distant climes at the same time, had taken a strong hold of his imagination.

‘I am afraid I should have no voice in the matter,— unless with the view of getting evidence.’

‘And we’ve got that;— haven’t we, Sir John?’

‘I think so.’

‘Duty, Sir John, duty!’ said Bagwax, almost sobbing through his triumph.

‘That’s it, Mr. Bagwax.’ Sir John too had given up his partridges,— for a day or two.

‘And that gentleman will now be restored to his wife?’

‘It isn’t for me to say. As you and I have been engaged on the same side ——’ To be told that he had been on the same side with the late attorney-general was almost compensation to Bagwax for the loss of his journey. ‘As you and I have been on the same side, I don’t mind telling you that I think that he ought to be released. The matter remains with the Secretary of State, who will probably be guided by the judge who tried the case.’

‘A stern man, Sir John.’

‘Not soft-hearted, Mr. Bagwax,— but as conscientious a man as you’ll be able to put your hand upon. The young wife with her nameless baby won’t move him at all. But were he moved by such consideration he would be so far unfit for his office.’

‘Mercy is divine,’ said Bagwax.

‘And therefore unfit to be used by a merely human judge. You know, I suppose, that Richard Shand has come home?’

‘No!’

‘Indeed he has, and was with me a day or two since.’

‘Can he say anything?’ Bagwax was not rejoiced at Dick’s opportune return. He thoroughly wished that Caldigate should be liberated, but he wished himself to monopolise the glory of the work.

‘He says a great deal. He has sworn point-blank that there was no such marriage at the time named. He and Caldigate were living together then, and for some weeks afterwards, and the woman was never near them during the time.’

‘To think of his coming just now!’

‘It will be a great help, Mr. Bagwax; but it wouldn’t be enough alone. He might possibly — tell an untruth.’

‘Perjury on the other side, as it were.’

‘Just that. But this little queen’s-head here can’t be untrue.’

‘No, Sir John, no; that can’t be,’ said Bagwax, comforted; ‘and the dated impression can’t lie either. The envelope is what’ll do it after all.’

‘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 m............