oes. He saw these by glimpses,
round corners, and at the ends of passages, but he did not actually pass
them by.

And now, passing under a narrow doorway, he found himself in the dock,
confronting a judge in his scarlet robes, in a large court-house. There
was nothing to elevate this Temple of Themis above its vulgar kind
elsewhere. Dingy enough it looked, in spite of candles lighted in decent
abundance. A case had just closed, and the last juror's back was seen
escaping through the door in the wall of the jury-box. There were some
dozen barristers, some fiddling with pen and ink, others buried in
briefs, some beckoning, with the plumes of their pens, to their
attorneys, of whom there were no lack; there were clerks to-ing and
fro-ing, and the officers of the court, and the registrar, who was handing
up a paper to the judge; and the tipstaff, who was presenting a note at
the end of his wand to a king's counsel over the heads of the crowd
between. If this was the High Court of Appeal, which never rose day or
night, it might account for the pale and jaded aspect of everybody in
it. An air of indescribable gloom hung upon the pallid features of all
the people here; no one ever smiled; all looked more or less secretly
suffering.

"The King against Elijah Harbottle!" shouted the officer.

"Is the appellant Lewis Pyneweck in court?" asked Chief-Justice Twofold,
in a voice of thunder, that shook the woodwork of the court, and boomed
down the corridors.

Up stood Pyneweck from his place at the table.

"Arraign the prisoner!" roared the Chief: and Judge Harbottle felt the
panels of the dock round him, and the floor, and the rails quiver in the
vibrations of that tremendous voice.

The prisoner, _in limine_, objected to this pretended court, as being a
sham, and non-existent in point of law; and then, that, even if it were
a court constituted by law (the Judge was growing dazed), it had not and
could not have any jurisdiction to try him for his conduct on the bench.

Whereupon the chief-justice laughed suddenly, and every one in court,
turning round upon the prisoner, laughed also, till the laugh grew and
roared all round like a deafening acclamation; he saw nothing but
glittering eyes and teeth, a universal stare and grin; but though all
the voices laughed, not a single face of all those that concentrated
their gaze upon him looked like a laughing face. The mirth subsided as
suddenly as it began.

The indictment was re