n ourselves. Would
that my clerk were here! We must send for Signsealer forthwith. I will
not decide without the statutes. The law must be consulted, and it
must be obeyed. The fellow hath not brought my wig. 'Tis a case of
murder no doubt. A Peer of the realm murdered! You must break the
intelligence to his surviving parent, and I will communicate to the
Secretary of State. Can the body be found? That will prove the murder.
Unless the body be found, the murder will not be proved, save
the villain confess, which he will not do unless he hath sudden
compunctions. I have known sudden compunctions go a great way. We had
a case before our bench last month; there was no evidence. It was not
a case of murder; it was of woodcutting; there was no evidence; but
the defendant had compunctions. Oh! here is my wig. We must send for
Signsealer. He is clerk to our bench, and he must bring the statutes.
'Tis not simple murder this; it involves petty treason.'

By this time his worship had completed his toilet, and he and his
colleague took their way to the parlour they had inhabited the
preceding evening. Mr. Signsealer was in attendance, much to the real,
though concealed, satisfaction of Squire Mountmeadow. Their worships
were seated like two consuls before the table, which Mr. Signsealer
had duly arranged with writing materials and various piles of
calf-bound volumes. Squire Mountmeadow then, arranging his
countenance, announced that the bench was prepared, and mine host was
instructed forthwith to summon the constable and his charge, together
with Peter and the ostler as witnesses. There was a rush among some of
the crowd who were nighest the scene to follow the prisoner into the
room; and, sooth to say, the great Mountmeadow was much too enamoured
of his own self-importance to be by any means a patron of close courts
and private hearings; but then, though he loved his power to be
witnessed, he was equally desirous that his person should be
reverenced. It was his boast that he could keep a court of quarter
sessions as quiet as a church; and now, when the crowd rushed in with
all those sounds of tumult incidental to such a movement, it required
only Mountmeadow slowly to rise, and drawing himself up to the full
height of his gaunt figure, to knit his severe brow, and throw one
of his peculiar looks around the chamber, to insure a most awful
stillness. Instantly everything was so hushed, that you might have
heard Signsealer nib his