Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/323

 Witness: "I do occasionally take a hand."

The L.C. (wiping his brow): "In point of fact, you deliberately admit—almost boast—that you are a card sharper? Gentlemen, you will hardly forget that! And the card you had in your hand was the ace of spades? Exactly! Now, gentlemen, I ask you to look at this witness—to try to realise that this man—this fellow creature (for he is still a fellow creature)—is capable, beneath his sleek and respectable exterior, of combining those base and degraded instincts—those revolting and deplorable inclinations which can so stifle a man's purer and loftier nature as to allow him, unblushing and unrepentant, to hold in his hand not only a card—not only a court-card—but an ace, and that ace the ace of spades! Gentlemen, we have heard of these things, but until this terrible moment, when this man stands before us in all his vileness, we have not realised them; we have not grasped the fact that they exist; that they are—how shall I utter the word?—used!!!" (The learned counsel was at this point so overcome by emotion that he begged leave to sit down for a moment.)

Such further light as may be needed is thrown upon this period of our Toddler's career by a few words from his diary of that date:—

"Wiped Horsewig's eye nicely over the card case, and knocked his witnesses into a cocked hat. Got our costs, too, which I hardly expected the old boy would give us. Dined with Horsewig in the evening, and cleared him out afterwards at poker."

More years pass, and the counsel (having become a Q.C.) is called to the bench; and the is complete. The keenest eye would fail to recognise in that chubby and cherubic judge, seated in