He was a tramp, a mere tramp, clearly a man of no importance to you or
me or anyone else in the world. The evening was warm, the place secluded
and remote, and, other things being equal, he climbed over the hedge,
chose a comfortable position against a haystack, pulled from his pocket
a fragment of a newspaper and a fragment of a pipe and settled down.
A tramp, the merest tramp, seven miles from anywhere, sitting in a field
smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper--what can such a one matter to
the world at large?
The portion of the newspaper was that containing the law reports, not a
prime favourite with the tramp. The lengthy report which had squeezed
out other matter that might have been worth reading was a proceeding
before the Lords of Appeal, in which Sir Rupert Bingley, K.C., M.P., was
being very explicit and very firm about the exact limitations of the
power of the Divisional Court to commit for contempt. This was hardly
fit matter for the reading of a young and susceptible tramp, our man was
telling himself, when the name of a district which he had once traversed
cropped up in the case and caught his wandering attention.
The spot in question was on the wild Welsh border, and it was at a
remote farm thereabouts that the trouble first began over which their
Lordships and Sir Rupert, together with innumerable other senior
counsel, junior counsel, solicitors, law reporters, lay reporters,
ushers, and what-nots were so troubling themselves and each other. The
farmer's stack of clover had been destroyed by fire, and the farmer,
feeling that this was rather the affair of the Insurance Company than
himself, had asked for solatium. The Insurance Company asked who set the
stack on fire; the farmer didn't know; the Insurance Company, having
regard to the size and the recent creation of the policy, were prepared
to guess. The case was heard at Presteign Assizes and the farmer lost
it, the jury who tried it being not quite so sure as was the farmer of
his innocence in the matter.
Encouraged by this, the Insurance Company prosecuted the farmer for
perjury; but the jury that tried this case took almost a stronger view
of the farmer's virtue than he did himself and found a verdict of "Not
Guilty," adding a rider very depreciatory of the Insurance Company.
Encouraged by this verdict, the farmer sued the Insurance Company for
malicious prosecution, but the jury that tried this case had no faith in
either party and disagreed. Another jury were then put in their stead
and they as good as disagreed by finding for the farmer but assessing
the damages at one farthing.
It will be observed that their Lordships have not yet appeared in the
matter, whereas the haystack, the cause of all the trouble, had as good
as disappeared. Meanwhile our tramp, who had seen better days and was
something of a mathematician, calculated that the total sum spent on
counsels' fees alone up to this point was well over two hundred guineas.
Social reformers get mixed up in everything nowadays, and one appeared
in the affair at this juncture. Having chanced to be in court at the
hearing of the Malicious Prosecution suit, he had formed an opinion of
the last-mentioned jury, and in an extremely witty speech, had included
them specifically in the long list of people and things that were no
better than they should, be. One of the jurors had unhappily been among
his audience and, possibly because his experience of another's cause had
endeared him to litigation, he must needs start his action for slander.
By the time that action had been tried, and appealed, and a new trial
ordered and held, and the legal proceedings in the respective
bankruptcies of the social reformer and the juror were completed, the
total of counsels' guineas must have been well on the other side of a
thousand.
Everybody had now forgotten that there ever was a stack involved and no
one would have recollected that the Insurance Company had had anything
to do with it, had not the social reformer, in the course of his public
examination, ingenuously attributed his financial downfall to the
original misbehaviour of that company in disbelieving their
policy-holders when they declared that they were not incendiaries.
Thereupon, after a number of applications by counsel to a number of
courts, the Insurance Company got itself inserted in the Bankruptcy
proceedings, but not before an enterprising newspaper had taken upon
itself to assert that there was an element of truth in the contention of
the social reformer. And then it was that the Contempt proceedings
began, and were fought strenuously stage by stage, each side briefing
more and more counsel as they went along, until at last, when the case
came before their Lordships, there were more barristers involved than
could be seated in the limited accommodation provided at the bar of
their Lordships' House.
To calculate even roughly the final total of counsels' fees was no easy
sum to be done on the fingers. After wrestling with it a little, the
tramp leant back and puffed hard at his pipe--so hard that the sparks
flew and the smoke became thick around him--so thick that "Bless my
soul," said the tramp, rising hurriedly, "there's another stack I've
been and gone and set afire!"
A tramp, a mere tramp going about the country and setting fire to
stacks, is not even he to be reckoned with in the order of things?
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[Illustration: _Professor (to novice during his first lesson)._ "WHAT ON
EARTH ARE YER DOIN' OVER THERE? YER KNOW YOU'LL 'AVE TO COME AN' DO A
BIT OF IN-FIGHTING IF YER WANT TO FIND MY WEAK SPOT."]
* * * * *