to drink the water of
remembrance, poured out for them with no uncertain hand. And somewhere
very far away, it may have been that Justice sat with her ironic smile
watching men judge their shadows. She had watched them so long about
that business. With her elementary idea that hares and tortoises should
not be made to start from the same mark she had a little given up
expecting to be asked to come and lend a hand; they had gone so far
beyond her. Perhaps she knew, too, that men no longer punished, but now
only reformed, their erring brothers, and this made her heart as light as
the hearts of those who had been in the prisons where they were no longer
punished.

The old butler, however, was not thinking of her; he had thoughts of a
simpler order in his mind. He was reflecting that he had once valeted
the nephew of the late Lord Justice Hawthorn, and in the midst of this
low-class business the reminiscence brought him refreshment. Over and
over to himself he conned these words: "I interpylated in between them,
and I says, 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself; call yourself an
Englishman, I says, attackin' of old men and women with cold steel, I
says!'" And suddenly he saw that Hughs was in the dock.

The dark man stood with his hands pressed to his sides, as though at
attention on parade. A pale profile, broken by a line of black
moustache, was all "Westminister" could see of that impassive face, whose
eyes, fixed on the magistrate, alone betrayed the fires within. The
violent trembling of the seamstress roused in Joshua Creed a certain
irritation, and seeing the baby open his black eyes, he nudged her,
whispering: "Ye've woke the baby!"

Responding to words, which alone perhaps could have moved her at such a
moment, Mrs. Hughs rocked this dumb spectator of the drama. Again the
old butler nudged her.

"They want yer in the box," he said.

Mrs. Hughs rose, and took her place.

He who wished to read the hearts of this husband and wife who stood at
right angles, to have their wounds healed by Law, would have needed to
have watched the hundred thousand hours of their wedded life, known and
heard the million thoughts and words which had passed in the dim spaces
of their world, to have been cognisant of the million reasons why they
neither of them felt that they could have done other than they had done.
Reading their hearts by the light of knowledge such as this, he would not
have been surprised that, brought i