'I--I am threatened with a breach of promise case.' Here, in desperate quest of inspiration, he made a clutch at his beard; his fingers closed upon the unfamiliar smoothness of a shaven chin; and with that, hope and courage (if such expressions could ever have been appropriate in the case of Pitman) conjointly fled.

He shook Michael roughly.

'Wake up!' he cried, with genuine irritation in his tones.

'I cannot do it, and you know I can't.' 'You must excuse my friend,' said Michael; 'he's no hand as a narrator of stirring incident.

The case is simple,' he went on.