us farce, in obedience to
the mandate, "Remove the prisoner," he was led from the dock. The lamps
seemed all to have gone out, and there were stoves and charcoal-fires
here and there, that threw a faint crimson light on the walls of the
corridors through which he passed. The stones that composed them looked
now enormous, cracked and unhewn.

He came into a vaulted smithy, where two men, naked to the waist, with
heads like bulls, round shoulders, and the arms of giants, were welding
red-hot chains together with hammers that pelted like thunderbolts.

They looked on the prisoner with fierce red eyes, and rested on their
hammers for a minute; and said the elder to his companion, "Take out
Elijah Harbottle's gyves;" and with a pincers he plucked the end which
lay dazzling in the fire from the furnace.

"One end locks," said he, taking the cool end of the iron in one hand,
while with the grip of a vice he seized the leg of the Judge, and locked
the ring round his ankle. "The other," he said with a grin, "is welded."

The iron band that was to form the ring for the other leg lay still red
hot upon the stone floor, with briliant sparks sporting up and down its
surface.

His companion, in his gigantic hands, seized the old Judge's other leg,
and pressed his foot immovably to the stone floor; while his senior, in
a twinkling, with a masterly application of pincers and hammer, sped the
glowing bar around his ankle so tight that the skin and sinews smoked
and bubbled again, and old Judge Harbottle uttered a yell that seemed to
chill the very stones, and make the iron chains quiver on the wall.

Chains, vaults, smiths, and smithy all vanished in a moment; but the
pain continued. Mr. Justice Harbottle was suffering torture all round
the ankle on which the infernal smiths had just been operating.

His friends, Thavies and Beller, were startled by the Judge's roar in
the midst of their elegant trifling about a marriage _a-la-mode_ case
which was going on. The Judge was in panic as well as pain. The street
lamps and the light of his own hall door restored him.

"I'm very bad," growled he between his set teeth; "my foot's blazing.
Who was he that hurt my foot? 'Tis the gout--'tis the gout!" he said,
awaking completely. "How many hours have we been coming from the
playhouse? 'Sblood, what has happened on the way? I've slept half the
night!"

There had been no hitch or delay, and they had driven home at a good
pace.

The Judge