Then he had shaken himself and awakened to the broad responsibilities
of life. A small case was offered him in the courts. Such cases he
had refused before; now Sally urged him to accept it and he obeyed,
looking rather to the future than her immediate prompting. So began
the seriousness of his career as a barrister. The second year only
brought one other small brief with it; but both cases were won. Then
he began to specialize in divorce and finally, contact with a
well-known solicitor which had come through the medium of journalism,
brought him his first brief in the probate and divorce division. The
case was rather a big one and he was not the leading counsel, but
the assistance he gave was deemed of such value, that the next brief
from the solicitor was given entirely to him.
Sally came down to the courts and listened to his cross-examination
of the woman who against a thousand incriminating circumstances was
fighting, with white lips and piteously hunted eyes, to keep her name
from the mud into which Traill was striving to drag it.
There she saw the cruelty in him again. It was impossible for her,
listening with every sense taut to the uttermost, to obliterate the
personal element, to think that he was merely a machine grinding,
in the course of his duty, as the implacable mills crush the yielding
grain into the listless powder of flour.
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