This being done, I bade an informal farewell to the Bar, and put away my wig and gown in a safe place, to be resumed if I were dismissed from office. Once only was an attempt made to entice me back to the Law Courts. At a London hotel, some few years after my appointment, I met a County Court Judge whom I had known in his caterpillar stage. He hailed me. Had I heard that old Z., County Court Judge at Y., was dying? I did not know the man, but I expressed decent regret. “I thay, Kynnerthley,” he went on, with the lisp so familiar to many common juries, “why thouldn’t you go in for hith plathe? I know ---- hath much interetht with the Government, and he would get it for you.” “My dear Judge,” I said, “you forget that I have left the Bar some time, and that when I was at it I had no practice.” He looked at me pityingly: “What doth that matter? Do you know Q., now County Court Judge at Dufferby? Give you my word he hadn’t got a wig and gown.” “Good gracious! why did the Chancellor appoint him?” “_He taught in Thunday Thcoolth in Twaddleton._” Alas! I had not even that scanty qualification, and I did not apply. The suitors at Y. have much to be thankful for. FOOTNOTES: [11] A recently created H.M.I. assures me that the method of appointment by the Sovereign is unaltered. I apologise. CHAPTER IX ARCADIA “I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths.”--_As You Like It._ The Lord President might appoint, but the Secretary disappoints, and he ordered me to Norfolk, there to act as second inspector to the Rev. F. Synge. The alternative, for there were two places to be filled up, was Oxford, and I was a good deal annoyed at my billet. At Oxford I could have dined in hall and common-room, read my _Times_ at the Union, and at the same time have been within easy reach of my home. But I have reason to believe that there were thorns on the Oxford rose-trees: certainly my successful rival made a very short stay in the Civil Service.