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When, therefore, in late November Ned received a letter from the lawyer telling him to be at the High Courts of Justice in the Strand, London, at ten thirty in the morning on a certain day, prepared to give his evidence, a most peculiar change took place in that bullet-headed youth. His appetite abandoned him; sweat stood on his brow at moments unconnected with honest toil. He gave the girl Pansy black looks; and sat with his prepared evidence before him, wiping the palms of his hands stealthily on his breeches. That, which he had never really thought would spring, was upon him after all, and panic, such as nothing physical could have caused in him, tweaked his nerves and paralysed his brain. But for his father he would never have come up to the scratch. Born before the halfpenny Press, and unable to ride a bicycle, unthreatened moreover by the witness-box, Bowden—after a long pipe—gave out his opinion that it “widden never du to let that chap ’ave it all his own way. There wasn’t nothin’ to it if Ned kept a stiff upper lip. ’Twid be an ’oliday-like in London for them both.”