that was the criminal court over which the
Bishop in his civil capacity presided, with nine of his neighbors on
the bench beside him. From this court an appeal was possible to the
Court of the Quarter, and again from the Quarter Court to the High
Court of Althing; but appeal in this case there was none, for there
was no defence. And because Icelandic law did not allow of the
imprisonment of a criminal until after he had been sentenced, an
inquest was called forthwith, lest Jason should escape or compass the
crime he had attempted. So the Court of Inquiry sat the same night in
the wooden shed that served both for Senate and House of Justice.

The snow was now falling heavily, and the hour was late, but the
courthouse was thronged. It was a little place--a plain box, bare,
featureless, and chill, with walls, roof and seats of wood, and floor
of hard earth. Four short benches were raised, step above step,
against the farthest side, and on the highest of these the Bishop
sat, with three of his colleagues on each of the three rows beneath
him. The prisoner stood on a broad stool to the right, and the
witnesses on a like stool to the left. A wooden bar crossed the room
about midway, and in the open space between that and the door the
spectators were crowded together. The place was lighted by candles,
and some were fixed to the walls, others were held by ushers on the
end of long sticks, and a few were hung to the roof rafters by hemp
ropes tied about their middle. The floor ran like a stream, and the
atmosphere was full of the vapor of the snow that was melting on the
people's clothes. Nothing could be ruder than the courthouse, but the
Court that sat there observed a rule of procedure that was almost an
idolatry of form.

The prisoner was called by the name of Jason, son of Stephen Orry,
and having answered in a voice so hollow that it seemed to come out
of the earth beneath him, he rose to his place. His attitude was dull
and impassive, and he seemed hardly to see the restless crowd that
murmured at sight of him. His tall figure stooped, there was a cloud
on his strong brow, and a slow fire in his bloodshot eyes, and his
red hair, long as a woman's, hung in disordered masses down his worn
cheeks to his shoulders. The Bishop, a venerable prelate of great
age, looked at him and thought, "That man's heart is dead within
him."

The spokesman of the Court was a middle-aged man, who was short, had
little piercing eyes, a squa