blance to those models of
administration. The justices of the peace, hastily convoked and four in
number, sat on the platform, with a semicircular backing of high gray
screens and a green baize barrier in front of them, so that their legs
and feet were quite invisible. In this way had been preserved the really
essential feature of all human justice--at whose feet it is well known
one must not look! Their faces, on the contrary, were entirely exposed
to view, and presented that pleasing variety of type and unanimity of
expression peculiar to men keeping an open mind. Below them, with his
face toward the public, was placed a gray-bearded man at a table also
covered with green baize, that emblem of authority. And to the side, at
right angles, raised into the air, sat a little terrier of a man,
with gingery, wired hair, obviously the more articulate soul of these
proceedings. As Felix sat down to worship, he noticed Mr. Pogram at
the green baize table, and received from the little man a nod and the
faintest whiff of lavender and gutta-percha. The next moment he
caught sight of Derek and Sheila, screwed sideways against one of the
distempered walls, looking, with their frowning faces, for all the world
like two young devils just turned out of hell. They did not greet him,
and Felix set to work to study the visages of Justice. They impressed
him, on the whole, more favorably than he had expected. The one to his
extreme left, with a gray-whiskered face, was like a large and sleepy
cat of mature age, who moved not, except to write a word now and then on
the paper before him, or to hand back a document. Next to him, a man
of middle age with bald forehead and dark, intelligent eyes seemed
conscious now and again of the body of the court, and Felix thought:
'You have not been a magistrate long.' The chairman, who sat next, with
the moustache of a heavy dragoon and gray hair parted in the middle,
seemed, on the other hand, oblivious of the public, never once looking
at them, and speaking so that they could not hear him, and Felix
thought: 'You have been a magistrate too long.' Between him and the
terrier man, the last of the four wrote diligently, below a clean, red
face with clipped white moustache and little peaked beard. And Felix
thought: 'Retired naval!' Then he saw that they were bringing in Tryst.
The big laborer advanced between two constables, his broad, unshaven
face held high, and his lowering eyes, through which his stran