“May it please your Lordship,” James began, again feeling dimly that he had read enough pleadings, “the defendants have filed an answer pleading that the will of the 22nd of December was not duly executed in accordance with the statute, and that the testator did not know and approve its contents, and an amended answer pleading that the said alleged will, if executed, was obtained by the undue influence of Augusta Smithers”—and once more his nervousness overcame him, and he pulled up with a jerk. Then came another pause even more dreadful than the first. The Judge took another note, as slowly as he could, and once more cleared his throat; but poor James could not go on. He could only wish that he might then and there expire, rather than face the hideous humiliation of such a failure. But he would have failed, for his very brain was whirling like that of a drunken man, had it not been for an occurrence that caused him for ever after to bless the name of Fiddlestick, Q.C., as the name of an eminent counsel is not often blessed in this ungrateful world. For Fiddlestick, Q.C., who, it will be remembered, was one of the leaders for the defendants, had been watching his unfortunate antagonist, till, realising how sorry was his plight, a sense of pity filled his learned breast. Perhaps he may have remembered some occasion, in the dim and distant corner of the past, when he had suffered from a similar access of frantic terror, or perhaps he may have been sorry to think that a young man should lose such an unrivalled opportunity of making a name. Anyhow, he did a noble act. As it happened, he was sitting at the right-hand corner of the Queen’s counsel seats, and piled upon the desk before him was a tremendous mass of law reports which his clerk had arranged there, containing cases to which it might become necessary to refer. Now, in the presence of these law reports, Mr. Fiddlestick, in the goodness of his heart, saw an opportunity of creating a diversion, and he created it with a vengeance. For, throwing his weight suddenly forward as though by accident, or in a movement of impatience, he brought his bent arm against the pile with such force, that he sent every book, and there must have been more than twenty of them, over the desk, right on to the head and shoulders of his choleric client, Mr. Addison, who was sitting immediately beneath, on the solicitors’ bench. Down went the books with a crash and a bang, and, carried away by their weight, down went Mr. Addison on to his nose among them—a contingency that Fiddlestick, Q.C., by-the-way, had not foreseen, for he had overlooked the fact of his client’s vicinity. The Judge made an awful face, and then, realising the ludicrous nature of the scene, his features relaxed into a smile. But Mr. Addison did not smile. He bounded up off the floor, books slipping off his back in every direction, and, holding his nose (which was injured) with one hand, came skipping right at his learned adviser.