"The Court, m'luds," FIBBINS airily proceeds, as if he were indebted
entirely to his own memory for the information, "held in _Cookson and
Gedge_ that a mortgagor who desires to foreclose--"

"Where is the case you mention?" suddenly asks the Judge who was
staring at me a moment ago. He is now engaged in first looking at my
instructor suspiciously, and then at me, as if he thought that there
was some horrible secret between us, which he is determined to probe
to the bottom.

"Volume Six of the _Law Reports_, m'lud."

"Page?" snaps PROSER.

"Page 184, m'lud. As I was saying, the Court there held that the right
to foreclose at any reasonable time is not taken away--"

This time the interruption comes from the Judge who I thought was
going mad, but who now seems to be preternaturally and offensively
sane.

"It would be odd," he observes, cuttingly, "if any Court _had_ decided
a point about mortgages in _Cookson versus Gedge_, because on looking
at the page to which you have referred us, find that _Cookson and
Gedge_ was _a running-down case_!"

I glance at the paper before me in consternation; another moment, and
the horrifying fact is revealed to me that the sheet of "authorities"
I have brought with me bears, not on the mortgage case now before the
Court, but on that previous six-guinea matter on which I had given