in the firmament." I had a
propensity for teaching, but was puzzled to discover how I could give so
practical an illustration of the text of Fichte.

"Believe me," I said, "I am strangely ignorant. Explain yourself."

He answered with a hollow voice:

"Murderers are shot up out of mortars into the sky, and stick there.
Those white, glistening specks, they are their skeletons."

Justice is prompt in Skitland. I was tried incredibly fast by a jury of
twelve men, who had absolutely heads. The judges had nothing but brain,
mouth, and ear. Three powerful tongues defended me, but as they were not
suffered to talk nonsense, they had little to say. The whole case was
too clear to be talked into cloudiness. Baron Terroro, in person,
deposed that he had sent his eyes to see a friend at Culmsey, and that
they were returning on the Skitzton coach, when I, illegally, came with
my whole bulk upon the box-seat, which he occupied. That one of his eyes
was, in that manner, totally destroyed, but that the other eye, having
escaped, identified me, and brought to his brain intelligence of the
calamity which had befallen. He deposed further, that having received
this information, he dispatched his uncrushed eye with arms from the
police-office, and accompanied with several members of the detective
force to capture the offender, and to procure the full proofs of my
crime. A sub-inspector of Skitzton police then deposed that he sent
three of his faculties, with his mouth, eye, and ear, to meet the coach.
That the driver, consisting only of a stomach and hands, had been
unable to observe what passed. That the guard, on the contrary, had
taxed me with my deed, that he had seen me rise from my seat upon the
murdered eye, and that he had heard me make confession of my guilt. The
guard was brought next into court, and told his tale. Then I was called
upon for my defense. If a man wearing a cloth coat and trowsers, and
talking excellent English, were to plead at the Old Bailey that he had
broken into some citizen's premises accidentally by falling from the
moon, his tale would be received in London as mine was in Skitzton. I
was severely reprimanded for my levity, and ordered to be silent. The
judge summed up, and the jury found me guilty. The judge, who had put on
the black cap before the verdict was pronounced, held out no hope of
mercy, and straightway sentenced me to death, according to the laws and
usage of the realm.

CHAPTER THE FOURT