A LEEDS ADVENTURE 245 



that I had been but recently called to the Bar he said : 

 " Come and localise at Leeds, and I'll make your fortune ! " 



The idea of localising at Leeds was, I confess, hateful to 

 me, but having given hostages to fortune in getting married 

 and so forth, I felt I ought not to study my own inclina- 

 tions, and so we decided to embark on this, to me, un- 

 attractive venture. Mr Curwood was as good as his word, 

 for at the very outset he invited me to a dinner at his 

 house where I met fully a dozen solicitors, to all of whom 

 he spoke about me in painfully eulogistic terms, and 

 before I had been at Leeds a fortnight I was fairly 

 overwhelmed with work, much of which was for the 

 municipal authorities. 



It is easy to understand that as there were counsel 

 in Leeds who had been established there for as much as 

 twenty years my meteoric appearance was not viewed 

 favourably, and one of my first cases was to defend some 

 of the town police who had acted quite indefensibly, 

 by searching someone's house for stolen property when 

 they had not a search warrant. 



Elder counsel sat in court with ill-concealed satisfaction 

 at my abortive efforts to defend these men. There had 

 been very good reason to suspect that the stolen property 

 was where they searched, but it was not, and to have 

 stated the grounds for suspicion would have been merely 

 to add insult to injury. However, I did the best I could, 

 and I am very sure none of the others in court could have 

 exculpated those policemen. It was easy to see that I 

 was going to get myself disliked, but I was prepared to 

 worry through all that, for the Town Clerk was a tower 

 of strength and I had full confidence in myself ; but there 

 came a bolt from the blue at the end of my first fortnight, 

 when my friend was offered the solicitorship of the Great 

 Eastern Railway and accepted it. Thereupon he departed 

 from Leeds, leaving me, who had gone up like a rocket, to 

 an entirely false position, to descend if not quite like a 

 stick, but still to descend. 



In a few months' time I had shaken down to a more 



