"Haven't you heard?" The voice in which this was said struck terror to the poor wretch's soul. There was awe in it and pity, and something almost of advice,--as though the voice were warning him to prepare against the evil which was threatening him. "They have got Mr Cheekey!" Here the voice became even more awful. "I knew they would when I first heard what the case was to be. They've got Mr Cheekey. They don't care much about money when they're going it like that. There are many of them I have known awful enough, but he's the awfullest." "He can't eat a fellow," said Cousin Henry, trying to look like a man with good average courage. "No; he can't eat a fellow. It isn't that way he does it. I've known some of 'em who looked as though they were going to eat a man; but he looks as though he were going to skin you, and leave you bare for the birds to eat you. He's gentle enough at first, is Mr Cheekey." "What is it all to me?" asked Cousin Henry. "Oh, nothing, sir. To a gentleman like you who knows what he's about it's all nothing. What can Mr Cheekey do to a gentleman who has got nothing to conceal? But when a witness has something to hide,--and sometimes there will be something,--then it is that Mr Cheekey comes out strong. He looks into a man and sees that it's there, and then he turns him inside out till he gets at it. That's what I call skinning a witness. I saw a poor fellow once so knocked about by Mr Cheekey that they had to carry him down speechless out of the witness-box." It was a vivid description of all that Cousin Henry had pictured to himself. And he had actually, by his own act, subjected himself to this process! Had he been staunch in refusing to bring any action against the newspaper, Mr Cheekey would have been powerless in reference to him. And now he was summoned into Carmarthen to prepare himself by minor preliminary pangs for the torture of the auto-da-fe which was to be made of him. "I don't see why I should go into Carmarthen at all," he said, having paused a while after the eloquent description of the barrister's powers. "Not come into Carmarthen! Why, sir, you must complete the instructions." "I don't see it at all." "Then do you mean to back out of it altogether, Mr Jones? I wouldn't be afeared by Mr Cheekey like that!" Then it occurred to him that if he did mean to back out of it altogether he could do so better at a later period, when they might hardly be able to catch him by force and bring him as a prisoner before the dreaded tribunal. And as it was his purpose to avoid the trial by giving up the will, which he would pretend to have found at the moment of giving it up, he would ruin his own project,--as he had done so many projects before,--by his imbecility at the present moment. Cheekey would not be there in Mr Apjohn's office, nor the judge and jury and all the crowd of the court to look at him. "I don't mean to back out at all," he said; "and it's very impertinent of you to say so."