It will be observed that their Lordships have not yet appeared in the matter, whereas the haystack, the cause of all the trouble, had as good as disappeared. Meanwhile our tramp, who had seen better days and was something of a mathematician, calculated that the total sum spent on counsels' fees alone up to this point was well over two hundred guineas.
Social reformers get mixed up in everything nowadays, and one appeared in the affair at this juncture. Having chanced to be in court at the hearing of the Malicious Prosecution suit, he had formed an opinion of the last-mentioned jury, and in an extremely witty speech, had included them specifically in the long list of people and things that were no better than they should, be. One of the jurors had unhappily been among his audience and, possibly because his experience of another's cause had endeared him to litigation, he must needs start his action for slander. By the time that action had been tried, and appealed, and a new trial ordered and held, and the legal proceedings in the respective bankruptcies of the social reformer and the juror were completed, the total of counsels' guineas must have been well on the other side of a thousand.
Everybody had now forgotten that there ever was a stack involved and no one would have recollected that the Insurance Company had had anything to do with it, had not the social reformer, in the course of his public examination, ingenuously attributed his financial downfall to the original misbehaviour of that company in disbelieving their policy-holders when they declared that they were not incendiaries. Thereupon, after a number of applications by counsel to a number of courts, the Insurance Company got itself inserted in the Bankruptcy proceedings, but not before an enterprising newspaper had taken upon itself to assert that there was an element of truth in the contention of the social reformer. And then it was that the Contempt proceedings began, and were fought strenuously stage by stage, each side briefing more and more counsel as they went along, until at last, when the case came before their Lordships, there were more barristers involved than could be seated in the limited accommodation provided at the bar of their Lordships' House.