oughing, and after that a fit
of gasping; and thus two or three minutes passed, during which the Judge
dropped his roquelaure on an arm-chair, and threw his cocked-hat over
that.

The venerable pedestrian in the white wig quickly recovered his voice.
With closed doors they remained together for some time.

There were guests waiting in the drawing-rooms, and the sound of men's
voices laughing, and then of a female voice singing to a harpsichord,
were heard distinctly in the hall over the stairs; for old Judge Harbottle
had arranged one of his dubious jollifications, such as might well make
the hair of godly men's heads stand upright for that night.

This old gentleman in the powdered white wig, that rested on his stooped
shoulders, must have had something to say that interested the Judge very
much; for he would not have parted on easy terms with the ten minutes
and upwards which that conference filched from the sort of revelry in
which he most delighted, and in which he was the roaring king, and in
some sort the tyrant also, of his company.

The footman who showed the aged gentleman out observed that the Judge's
mulberry-coloured face, pimples and all, were bleached to a dingy
yellow, and there was the abstraction of agitated thought in his manner,
as he bid the stranger good-night. The servant saw that the conversation
had been of serious import, and that the Judge was frightened.

Instead of stumping upstairs forthwith to his scandalous hilarities, his
profane company, and his great china bowl of punch--the identical bowl
from which a bygone Bishop of London, good easy man, had baptised this
Judge's grandfather, now clinking round the rim with silver ladles, and
hung with scrolls of lemon-peel--instead, I say, of stumping and
clambering up the great staircase to the cavern of his Circean
enchantment, he stood with his big nose flattened against the window-pane,
watching the progress of the feeble old man, who clung stiffly to
the iron rail as he got down, step by step, to the pavement.

The hall-door had hardly closed, when the old Judge was in the hall
bawling hasty orders, with such stimulating expletives as old colonels
under excitement sometimes indulge in now-a-days, with a stamp or two of
his big foot, and a waving of his clenched fist in the air. He commanded
the footman to overtake the old gentleman in the white wig, to offer him
his protection on his way home, and in no case to show his face again
withou