Nor was either to blame for the iniquitous judgments, into the details of which I do not propose to enter, but which had the effect, as I have already stated, of seriously impoverishing my poor father. For from the outset Mr. Balfour Whey, although sharing to the full in my father’s indignation, was explicit as to the difficulty that would certainly accrue in translating this into a legal victory. Indeed the only vehicle under which proceedings could possibly be instituted was the original and extremely crude Employers’ Liability Act,[10] and this upon the doubtful assumption of the applicability of Sub-section (I) of Section I, and subject to the further acceptance of the Carkeek lectern as a portion of the plant of St. James-the-Least-of-All. Under this earlier Act, too, the status of the vicar as employer and that of his sidesmen as employés was far less substantiable in law that it would have been under the Workmen’s Compensation Act; and deeply as I have always regretted, on general grounds, the inclusion of this latter measure in our legal machinery, I have equally deplored that it was not then available to assist my poor father in his heroic crusade. Footnote 10: 43 and 44 Vic. cap 42 (1880). From the beginning, therefore, it was an unequal contest, with the dice of evasion loaded against my father, and all the forces of idolatry, spite, and ambition arrayed to defeat the course of justice. Thus, despite the arguments—and I have never listened to longer or more powerful ones—of the celebrated counsel that my father employed; despite the photographs—and I have never seen any more heart-rending—of the contused areas of my father’s person; and despite the irrepressible applause from Simeon and myself that greeted his every reply in the witness-box, the case was not only decided against him with costs, on a series of the most palpable legal quibbles, but an appeal to a higher court met with a similarly scandalous and financially devastating result. Obviously primed, too, by the Carkeeks—although our detectives were unable to prove this—the verdict in each case became the subject of a malicious article in the _Camberwell Observer_, my father once more having to bear the total costs of the prosecutions that immediately ensued. Nor did a printed appeal to the congregation of St. James-the-Least-of-All bring my poor father more than eight shillings, although the cost of its printing and subsequent postage had amounted to no less than three pounds. Moreover—and even now the pen shakes in my hand as I force it to write the shameful words—not only was the lectern retained in the church (where it may probably be seen at this moment), but within less than a year Cosmo and Corkran Carkeek were the sons of the vicar’s churchwarden. It was perhaps the bitterest stab of the whole squalid conspiracy. But my father was then too enfeebled for active resistance.