d whenever
they stopped, because of the crowd, each soldier unrolled his green mat,
and stood on it till it was time to go on again. And they had to stop
several times, for the crowd was very thick in the great squares and in
the narrow streets of the city. It was a wonderful crowd. There were men
and women and children in every sort of dress. Italian, Spanish,
Russian; French peasants in blue blouses and wooden shoes, workmen in
the dress English working people wore a hundred years ago. Norwegians,
Swedes, Swiss, Turks, Greeks, Indians, Arabians, Chinese, Japanese,
besides Red Indians in dresses of skins, and Scots in kilts and
sporrans. Philip did not know what nation most of the dresses belonged
to--to him it was a brilliant patchwork of gold and gay colours. It
reminded him of the fancy-dress party he had once been to with Helen,
when he wore a Pierrot's dress and felt very silly in it. He noticed
that not a single boy in all that crowd was dressed as he was--in what
he thought was the only correct dress for boys. Lucy walked beside him.
Once, just after they started, she said, 'Aren't you frightened,
Philip?' and he would not answer, though he longed to say, 'Of course
not. It's only girls who are afraid.' But he thought it would be more
disagreeable to say nothing, so he said it.

When they got to the Hall of Justice, she caught hold of his hand, and
said:

'Oh!' very loud and sudden, 'doesn't it remind you of anything?' she
asked.

Philip pulled his hand away and said 'No' before he remembered that he
had decided not to speak to her. And the 'No' was quite untrue, for the
building did remind him of something, though he couldn't have told you
what.

The prisoners and their guard passed through a great arch between
magnificent silver pillars, and along a vast corridor, lined with
soldiers who all saluted.

'Do all sorts of soldiers salute you?' he asked the captain, 'or only
just your own ones?'

'It's _you_ they're saluting,' the captain said; 'our laws tell us to
salute all prisoners out of respect for their misfortunes.'

The judge sat on a high bronze throne with colossal bronze dragons on
each side of it, and wide shallow steps of ivory, black and white.

Two attendants spread a round mat on the top of the steps in front of
the judge--a yellow mat it was, and very thick, and he stood up and
saluted the prisoners. ('Because of your misfortunes,' the captain
whispered.)

The judge wore a bright yell