“I see what it is,” he said, filling his pipe. “They are all in the ring, and they are afraid a rank outsider is going to break it. And so he shall!” He finished with a volley of oaths. The next moment tears had sprung to his eyes. Tears of chagrin, rage, disgust, of resentment against himself. How dare he be so arrogant when the words of the honest old man, spoken while the hand of death was upon him, were still in his ears. Mediocrity had its function, its reason to be. Until he had grasped that elementary truth he could never emerge, clad in valor and completeness, upon that high platform which nature had designed him to occupy. “Cad” Northcote had been the name bestowed upon him at school by his humbler but honester fellows: the same term of opprobrium had now been applied to him in a more public manner. It was unworthy that he should ascribe the bitter antagonism he had raised against himself to the eternal feud of mediocrity versus genius. That fine gentleman, the old judge, was incapable of bearing false testimony. Outface it as he might, the flaw was in himself. It had been there from the beginning. The genie in which his intellectual pride was centred was the seat of the canker. Every time he employed it he must be aware of his fatal gift. It was a sinister talisman, or, in the words of the judge, a two-edged sword. Better a thousand times not to be distinguished from the mediocrity he was never weary of despising, than to be at the mercy of a genius that would compass his destruction. He took up another newspaper, and turned his attention to an article entitled: “‘Bow-wow’ Brudenell, by an Old Friend.” In the course of a column of appreciation it said: “Public life is the poorer to-day by a memorable figure. Mr. Justice Brudenell had achieved an odd sort of fame. It rested upon his idiosyncrasies upon the bench; upon the curious, irascible, barking delivery he affected, which earned him the name by which he was always spoken of in the circles in which he moved. In the judgment of his profession he was hardly considered to be a ‘strong’ judge, nor was he widely popular; yet although he had detractors, he was always listened to with respect. His queer little tricks of manner and his somewhat formidable aspect created an impression in the public mind which cannot be said to have been wholly in his favor. Yet none could have told from his demeanor on the bench what the man was at heart. It would require the pen of a Charles Lamb to limn him in his quiddity. To his private friends he was a perpetual delight and stimulus; he stood for all that was worthiest in the human character. He kept a too fearful conscience ever to be truly eminent in public life, but no kinder, humbler, humaner gentleman ever walked the earth than Joseph Brudenell.