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parrot I had become.
    â€˜I was already beginning to feel extremely small, particularly after the exhibition I’d given to my client in the train as to what I was going to do with this judgment debtor. Here I was, just repeating what he was feeding me with. But even that wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been right.
    â€˜â€œNonsense,” said the judge. “You can’t commit a man for non-payment of a fine unless you can prove he has the means to pay. Do you know what is meant by an argument in a circle?”
    â€˜â€œI think so, Your Honour,” I said.
    â€˜â€œA good example,” said the judge, “is the law relating to judgment summonses. If a judgment debt isn’t paid, the debtor can only be sent to prison if you can prove he has had the means to pay. Usually you can’t do that unless he’s present to be cross-examined about his means. If he doesn’t obey the summons to appear, he can be fined, but you can’t do anything about the fine unless you can prove he has the means to pay it. But he doesn’t come. So you can’t ask him questions or prove anything. So you’re back where you started. Of course, if he’s got any goods on which distress can be levied, it’s different, but then you’d have tried execution and wouldn’t have bothered about a judgment summons in that case.”
    â€˜Meantime I’m standing there, getting red in the face.
    â€˜â€œWell, Mr Hepplewhite, what would you like me to do?”
    â€˜Someone in the row – a barrister or solicitor – whispered to me. “Ask for a 271.”
    â€˜Again I did as suggested.
    â€˜â€œWhat on earth’s that?” asked the judge.
    â€˜Well, what could I say? The chap next to me might have been pulling my leg. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. So I said so. You can hardly blame the judge.
    â€˜â€œReally,” he said. “This is too bad. Summons dismissed.”
    â€˜My client said something to me about looking up the rules another time and added that he wouldn’t be coming back my way. On the way home I started looking it up – and, blow me, if there isn’t a thing called a 271. The chap was quite right. It was the only thing to do. Even the judge didn’t know it. It’s certainly a lesson to look up the rules another time. But it takes it out of you, a thing like that.’
    â€˜It must have been awful,’ said Roger. ‘But you can’t look up everything before you go into Court,’ he went on. ‘How d’you know what to look up?’
    â€˜Well, I suppose,’ said Charles, ‘if you have a judgment summons, you ought to look up the rules which govern them. And I suppose, too, one ought to visualize the possibility of a man not turning up and find out what you can do then. I shan’t forget 271 in a hurry. I feel like writing to the judge about it. After all, he ought to have known it.’
    â€˜What is a 271?’ asked Roger.
    â€˜It’s an authority to arrest the debtor and bring him before the Court if he doesn’t pay a fine within the time he’s been given to pay it. So it isn’t an argument in a circle. You can get the debtor there. Funny the judge didn’t know.’
    â€˜I suppose there are things judges don’t know,’ said Roger, ‘Henry’s got a case in a County Court tomorrow. D’you think it would be a good thing if I went with him? He said I could.’
    â€˜I should. You’ll learn a lot from Henry. And, apart from that, he’ll tell you stories on the way. He’s got an unending fund of them. And they’ll all be new to you . I expect that’s one of the reasons he asked you to come.’
    Roger spent the rest of the day reading the papers in Biggs v Pieman and the case about drawing pins. The evening he spent with Sally.
    â€˜It’s amazing to think what’s going on and no one