would--happen.

'Harrison,' said Venables gently, but with meaning, as he hesitated,
'do you know what it is to wish you had never been born?'

And Harrison, with a thoughtful expression on his face, picked up a
photograph from the floor, and hung it neatly in its place over the
mantelpiece.




[5]

BRADSHAW'S LITTLE STORY


The qualities which in later years rendered Frederick Wackerbath
Bradshaw so conspicuous a figure in connection with the now celebrated
affair of the European, African, and Asiatic Pork Pie and Ham Sandwich
Supply Company frauds, were sufficiently in evidence during his school
career to make his masters prophesy gloomily concerning his future. The
boy was in every detail the father of the man. There was the same
genial unscrupulousness, upon which the judge commented so bitterly
during the trial, the same readiness to seize an opportunity and make
the most of it, the same brilliance of tactics. Only once during those
years can I remember an occasion on which Justice scored a point
against him. I can remember it, because I was in a sense responsible
for his failure. And he can remember it, I should be inclined to think,
for other reasons. Our then Headmaster was a man with a straight eye