contentedly throughout the whole proceedings.
He never spoke or even looked up, but seemed as unconscious
as a child on the floor of an empty nursery.

On a row of chairs raised high on the top of a long settee sat
the three young ladies with their backs up against the window,
and Mary Gray in the middle; it was something between a jury
box and the stall of the Queen of Beauty at a tournament.
Down the centre of the long table Moon had built a low barrier
out of eight bound volumes of "Good Words" to express the moral
wall that divided the conflicting parties. On the right side
sat the two advocates of the prosecution, Dr. Pym and Mr. Gould;
behind a barricade of books and documents, chiefly (in the case
of Dr. Pym) solid volumes of criminology. On the other side,
Moon and Inglewood, for the defence, were also fortified
with books and papers; but as these included several old yellow
volumes by Ouida and Wilkie Collins, the hand of Mr. Moon
seemed to have been somewhat careless and comprehensive.
As for the victim and prosecutor, Dr. Warner, Moon wanted at first
to have him kept entirely behind a high screen in the corner,
urging the indelicacy of his appearance in court, but privately
assuring him of an unofficial permission to peep over the top
now and then. Dr. Warner, however, failed to rise to the chivalry
of such a course, and after some little disturbance and discussion
he was accommodated with a seat on the right side of the table
in a line with his legal advisers.

It was before this solidly-established tribunal that Dr. Cyrus Pym,
after passing a hand through the honey-coloured hair over each ear,
rose to open the case. His statement was clear and even restrained,
and such flights of imagery as occurred in it only attracted attention
by a certain indescribable abruptness, not uncommon in the flowers
of American speech.

He planted the points of his ten frail fingers on the mahogany,
closed his eyes, and opened his mouth. "The time has gone by,"
he said, "when murder could be regarded as a moral and individual act,
important perhaps to the murderer, perhaps to the murdered.
Science has profoundly..." here he paused, poising his compressed
finger and thumb in the air as if he were holding an elusive idea
very tight by its tail, then he screwed up his eyes and said
"modified," and let it go--"has profoundly Modified our view of death.
In superstitious ages it was regarded as the termination of life,
ca