delayed our proceedings,
without bringing fresh light to bear upon our investigations. After the
luncheon interval, I was pleased to observe that for one cause or
another--I repeat, for one cause or another--he was distinctly--shall I
say somnolent, gentlemen? Yes, I will say somnolent. And I wish to
inform him that the more somnolent he remains, the better we shall all
be pleased."

"Hear, hear! Quite true!" shouted the jury.

"Does it appear to you, sir, fitting to sit here wasting time?" Mr.
Clarkson continued, with diminishing timidity. "Does it seem to you a
proper task for twenty-three apparently rational beings--"

"Twenty-two! Twenty-two!" cried the red-faced man, adding up the jurors
with the end of a pen, and ostentatiously omitting Mr. Clarkson.

The jurors shook with laughter. They wiped tears from their eyes. They
rolled their heads on the pink blotting-paper in their joy. When quiet
was restored, the foreman proceeded:

"I have already ruled that gentleman out of order, and I warn him that
if he perseveres in his contumacious disregard of common decency and the
chair, I shall proceed to extremities as the law directs. We are here,
gentlemen, to fulfil a public duty as honourable British citizens, and
here we will remain until that duty is fulfilled, or we will know the
reason why."

He glanced defiantly round, assuming an aspect worthy of the last stand
at Maiwand. Looking at Mr. Clarkson as turkeys might look at a stray
canary, the jurors expressed their applause.

But the genial usher took pity, and whispered across the table to him,
"It'll all come right, sir; it'll all come right. You wait a bit. The
Grand Jury always rejects one case before it's done; sometimes two."

And sure enough, next morning, while Mr. Clarkson was reading Burke's
speeches which he had brought with him, one of the jurors objected to
the evidence in the eighty-seventh case. "We cannot be too cautious,
gentlemen," he said, "in arriving at a decision in these delicate
matters. The apprehension of blackmail in relation to females hangs over
every living man in this country."

"Delicate matters; blackmail; relation to females; great apprehension of
blackmail in these delicate matters," murmured the jury, shaking their
heads, and they threw out the Bill with the consciousness of an
independent and righteous deed.

Soon after midday, the last of the cases was finished, and having
signified a True Bill for nearly the hundred