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228 could with propriety be made to it in the presence of the judge before whom the cause was now pending, and the ground was considered too sacred for feet to tread upon it. Were it not that this feeling is so general an English judge and English counsellors would almost be forced to subject themselves in such cases to the close custody which jurymen are called upon to endure. But, as a rule, good taste and good feeling are as potent as locks and walls.

'Do you know, Mr. Graham,' said Madeline, in that sort of whisper which a dinner-table allows, 'that Mrs. Baker says you have cut her since you got well.'

'I! I cut one of my very best friends! How can she say anything so untrue? If I knew where she lived I'd go and pay her a visit after dinner.'

'I don't think you need do that,—though she has a very snug little room of her own. You were in it on Christmas-day when we had the snapdragon,—when you and Marion carried away the dishes.'

'I remember. And she is base enough to say that I have cut her? I did see her for a moment yesterday, and then I spoke to her.'

'Ah, but you should have had a long chat with her. She expects you to go back over all the old ground, how you were brought in helpless, how the doctor came to you, and how you took all the messes she prepared for you like a good boy. I'm afraid, Mr. Graham, you don't understand old women.'

'Nor young ones either,' it was on his tongue to say, but he did not say it.

'When I was a young man,' said the baron, carrying on some conversation which had been general at the table, 'I never had an opportunity of breaking my ribs out hunting.'

'Perhaps if you had,' said Augustus, 'you might have used it with more effect than my friend here, and have deprived the age of one of its brightest lights, and the bench of one of its most splendid ornaments.'

'Hear, hear, hear!' said his father.

'Augustus is coming out in a new character,' said his mother.

'I am heartily obliged to him,' said the baron. 'But, as I was saying before, these sort of things never came in my way. If I remember right, my father would have thought I was mad had I talked of going out hunting. Did you hunt, Staveley?'

When the ladies were gone the four lawyers talked about law, though they kept quite clear of that special trial which was going on at Alston. Judge Staveley, as we know, had been at the Birmingham congress; but not so his brother the baron. Baron Maltby, indeed, thought but little of the Birmingham doings, and