in their scarlet robes and heavy dark periwigs, Baron
Jeffreys of Wem enthroned in the middle place.

The prisoners filed in under guard. The crier called for silence under
pain of imprisonment, and as the hum of voices gradually became hushed,
Mr. Blood considered with interest the twelve good men and true that
composed the jury. Neither good nor true did they look. They were
scared, uneasy, and hangdog as any set of thieves caught with their
hands in the pockets of their neighbours. They were twelve shaken men,
each of whom stood between the sword of the Lord Chief Justice's recent
bloodthirsty charge and the wall of his own conscience.

From them Mr. Blood's calm, deliberate glance passed on to consider the
Lords Commissioners, and particularly the presiding Judge, that Lord
Jeffreys, whose terrible fame had come ahead of him from Dorchester.

He beheld a tall, slight man on the young side of forty, with an oval
face that was delicately beautiful. There were dark stains of suffering
or sleeplessness under the low-lidded eyes, heightening their brilliance
and their gentle melancholy. The face was very pale, save for the vivid
colour of the full lips and the hectic flush on the rather high but
inconspicuous cheek-bones. It was something in those lips that marred
the perfection of that countenance; a fault, elusive but undeniable,
lurked there to belie the fine sensitiveness of those nostrils, the
tenderness of those dark, liquid eyes and the noble calm of that pale
brow.

The physician in Mr. Blood regarded the man with peculiar interest
knowing as he did the agonizing malady from which his lordship suffered,
and the amazingly irregular, debauched life that he led in spite of
it--perhaps because of it.

"Peter Blood, hold up your hand!"

Abruptly he was recalled to his position by the harsh voice of the clerk
of arraigns. His obedience was mechanical, and the clerk droned out the
wordy indictment which pronounced Peter Blood a false traitor against
the Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Prince, James the Second, by
the grace of God, of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland King, his
supreme and natural lord. It informed him that, having no fear of God in
his heart, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil,
he had failed in the love and true and due natural obedience towards his
said lord the King, and had moved to disturb the peace and tranquillity
of the kingdom and to stir up war and rebell