this man had vanished. He turned to the tipstaff. His first effort
to speak ended in a gasp. He cleared his throat, and told the astounded
official to arrest that man who had interrupted the court.

"He's but this moment gone down _there_. Bring him in custody before me,
within ten minutes' time, or I'll strip your gown from your shoulders
and fine the sheriff!" he thundered, while his eyes flashed round the
court in search of the functionary.

Attorneys, counsellors, idle spectators, gazed in the direction in which
Mr. Justice Harbottle had shaken his gnarled old hand. They compared
notes. Not one had seen any one making a disturbance. They asked one
another if the Judge was losing his head.

Nothing came of the search. His lordship concluded his charge a great
deal more tamely; and when the jury retired, he stared round the court
with a wandering mind, and looked as if he would not have given sixpence
to see the prisoner hanged.

CHAPTER V

_Caleb Searcher_

The Judge had received the letter; had he known from whom it came, he
would no doubt have read it instantaneously. As it was he simply read
the direction:

_To the Honourable
The Lord Justice
Elijah Harbottle,
One of his Majesty's Justices of
the Honourable Court of Common Pleas._

It remained forgotten in his pocket till he reached home.

When he pulled out that and others from the capacious pocket of his
coat, it had its turn, as he sat in his library in his thick silk
dressing-gown; and then he found its contents to be a closely-written
letter, in a clerk's hand, and an enclosure in "secretary hand," as I
believe the angular scrivinary of law-writings in those days was termed,
engrossed on a bit of parchment about the size of this page. The letter
said:

MR. JUSTICE HARBOTTLE,--MY LORD,

I am ordered by the High Court of Appeal to acquaint your lordship,
in order to your better preparing yourself for your trial, that a
true bill hath been sent down, and the indictment lieth against your
lordship for the murder of one Lewis Pyneweck of Shrewsbury,
citizen, wrongfully executed for the forgery of a bill of exchange,
on the ----th day of ---- last, by reason of the wilful perversion
of the evidence, and the undue pressure put upon the jury, together
with the illegal admission of evidence by your lordship, well
knowing the same to be illegal, by all which the promoter of the
prosecution of the sa