said seats had been reserved for us, and led us to
two on the side aisle near the front, and quite under the shadow of the
balcony. Once I had sat down among the crowd I ceased to notice it,
and began to take in what was directly before me.

At that end of the room which we were facing was a platform, railed
off, and on it a great high desk, at which a rather undersized man sat,
leaning his head on a beautiful white plump hand, and looking up at the
ceiling as if he were thinking. His face was round, fair and unlined,
and had it not been for his mop of grizzled hair I would have thought
him quite young.

"That is Judge Kelland, who tries the case," father whispered.

I felt a wonder that he should seem so uninterested in what was going
on. In front of his desk, but below the platform, a man was writing at
a little table covered with papers; and in front of this again was
another table, larger and quite long, at which a number of men were
sitting. Nearest us Mr. Dingley sat with another gentleman, small,
slim and very calm looking. They had their heads together, evidently
talking; and next to them was a young man who seemed to be making
jottings in a note-book. Beyond him I could make out no more than
vague heads and elbows, on account of the movement of the crowd. To
the right of this long table and on a line with our places was
something I recognized as the jury box, the heads of some of the men in
it showing quaintly over the high side.

From one thing to another my eyes traveled hastily, taking them in
unconsciously, for the one figure I was looking for--that I had
expected to see before all others, standing up in the prisoner's dock,
the centering point for all eyes--I could not find. The only thing
that might have been a prisoner's dock, a small railed inclosure on the
right hand of the judge's desk, was empty. But presently there was a
shift in the restless gathering, some people, who had been standing up,
sat down; and I saw a little more of the long table, first a space,
where no one was sitting, and then the broad back of a man, who had
shifted in his chair as if to face the person next to him. In a moment
he had turned back again, and leaned forward, and there, in the little
space through the crowd,--a profile like a picture in a frame,--I saw
Johnny Montgomery's face.

The start it gave me may have been pure astonishment, I saw it so
suddenly and it looked so different. All the dishevelment,