Sir Ralph was a mean man, he was little short of a miser, and he had the settled conviction that, in taking care of the pennies, he was appointed as by divine right, the natural heir to hundreds.

It seemed to her, in her first year of marriage, that she could never escape from the eternal account book. He was a man who believed in domestic stock-taking. He knew, better than she, the prevalent price of potatoes, and he noted with pain any advance in the grocer’s bill, and set himself the congenial task of discovering the cause for any such swollen expenditure.

Now she looked along the Bench at her husband curiously; he was always a source of interest to her. She needed some such interest to sustain her in her everyday acquaintance with this man.

He was summing up with gross partiality. Though he had had one or two bad raps from the Court of Criminal Appeal, he was not to be turned from his set purpose, which was to rid the country of those who showed a disinclination to distinguish the difference between meum and teum.

All who knew the circumstances realized that the summing up was in the veriest bad taste. The young man, white of face, who stood by the dock’s edge, his shaking hands clasping and unclasping the iron rail before him, was being tried for burglary, and the burglary was at Sir Ralph’s own place.

“He has told you, Gentlemen of the Jury,” went on Sir Ralph in his speech, “that a mysterious Italian asked him to break into the house, where somebody would be waiting to give him an equally mysterious packet. He did not intend to steal, so he tells you; he was merely carrying out the instructions of this mythical—perhaps I ought not to say ‘mythical,’” said Sir Ralph hastily, with the recollection of a Lord Chief Justice’s comments on a judgment of his—“but which may to you, Gentlemen of the Jury, appear to be a mythical person.

“He tells you that he was induced by his poverty to go to Highlawn at midnight, to effect an entrance through the kitchen, and there to wait until some cloaked, masked individual brought him a packet which he was to bring away. He tells you that he had no intention whatever of robbing the owner. He was merely being the accomplice of some person in the house.”

Sir Ralph leant back with a little contemptuous smile.

“Well, Gentlemen of the Jury,” he said, throwing out his hands, with pseudo good-nature, “if you believe that, of course you still must convict the man on the charge of being an accomplice. As you know, there is in this house a very valuable collection of Renaissance jewellery; and when the Counsel for the Crown tells you, as he has told you, that the inference to be drawn from the man’s presence in the kitchen, where the butler discovered him, is that he intended to make a raid upon that jewellery, you are, perhaps, as justified in believing that suggestion as you are in believing that of the prisoner’s Counsel—that he was merely acting as an innocent agent in the matter.”

He said a few more words, summarized such of the evidence as had not come under his previous purview, and commended the jury to their deliberations with the air of benevolence which invariably enwrapped the peroration of his more malignant speeches.

The jury tramped out, and a buzz of conversation overhung the court. The prisoner lingered a little by the rails; he looked down at the delicate face of his girl-wife, this woman of seventeen, who had sat throughout the trial tense and haggard, listening to the evidence.

“It can’t be helped, dear,” he said. He was a man of the working classes, but his voice showed an unusual culture.

The girl could only raise her piteous eyes to his; her lips trembled, she could frame no answer. She knew that her young husband spoke the truth. Poverty had ground them down to desperation, but to whatever end it might drive them, it would never make her man a thief.

The jury were back in five minutes. They shuffled into the box, and answered to their names, keeping their eyes averted from the prisoner at the Bar. The Clerk of Assizes put his questions to them.

“Do you find the prisoner ‘Guilty’ or ‘Not Guilty’ of the crime of burglary?”

“Guilty,” said the foreman, in a high, nervous voice.

Sir Ralph nodded his head approvingly. He turned to the prisoner as the Clerk said, “Have you anything to say before the sentence is passed?”

The man in the dock took a swift glance at the drooping figure of his wife. She had fainted, and a kindly policeman was lifting her to carry her from the court.

“The story I have told,” he said, speaking clearly and without hesitation, “was a true story. I had no idea of burgling your house, Sir Ralph. I merely went there because I thought I was acting as the agent of somebody who was carrying on some sort of——” he hesitated. “I hardly like to say it—some sort of intrigue,” he continued boldly, “and did not want this fact to leak out.”

His eyes roved round the Bench and halted when they met those of Lady Morte-Mannery. They looked at each other; she calmly, incuriously, he hopefully, with a wondering, puzzled stare.

“It is my first offence,” he went on. “I have never been in this position before, and although the jury have found me ‘Guilty,’ my lord, I do hope that you will take a lenient view of my offence, not only for my own sake, but for the sake of my wife and unborn child.” His voice shook a little as he pleaded. It was the only sign of emotion he had given.

Sir Ralph nodded again. It was a grim nod. It put a period to the prisoner’s speech. The Chairman adjusted his gold pince-nez, and bent his head from left to right, consulting his colleagues.

“Your offence, George Mansingham,” he said, “is peculiarly abhorrent to me. I do not consider the fact that the house burgled was my own. Fortunately I am unaffected by personal considerations, and the fact that I, myself, was away from home that night enables me to try this case in an unprejudiced spirit.”

He looked down at the paper on his desk musingly. Then he suddenly jerked his head up.

“You will be kept in penal servitude for seven years,” he said.

Something like a gasp ran through the court.