who, to do him justice, cared no more (in his own phrase)
for imminent danger or death, than he did for the puncture of a flea's
proboscis--did not so easily renounce the secret object of his ambition,
which was to acquire the notice of the large and lofty Sir Geoffrey
Peveril, who, being at least three inches taller than his son, was in so
far possessed of that superior excellence, which the poor dwarf, in
his secret soul, valued before all other distinctions, although in
his conversation, he was constantly depreciating it. "Good comrade and
namesake," he proceeded, stretching out his hand, so as to again to
reach the elder Peveril's cloak, "I forgive your want of reminiscence,
seeing it is long since I saw you at Naseby, fighting as if you had as
many arms as the fabled Briareus."

The Knight of Martindale, who had again turned his head towards the
little man, and had listened, as if endeavouring to make something out
of his discourse, here interrupted him with a peevish, "Pshaw!"

"Pshaw!" repeated Sir Geoffrey the less; "_Pshaw_ is an expression of
slight esteem,--nay, of contempt,--in all languages; and were this a
befitting place----"

But the Judges had now taken their places, the criers called silence,
and the stern voice of the Lord Chief Justice (the notorious Scroggs)
demanded what the officers meant by permitting the accused to
communicate together in open court.

It may here be observed, that this celebrated personage was, upon the
present occasion, at a great loss how to proceed. A calm, dignified,
judicial demeanour, was at no time the characteristic of his official
conduct. He always ranted and roared either on the one side or the
other; and of late, he had been much unsettled which side to take, being
totally incapable of anything resembling impartiality. At the first
trials for the Plot, when the whole stream of popularity ran against the
accused, no one had been so loud as Scroggs; to attempt to the character
of Oates or Bedloe, or any other leading witnesses, he treated as a
crime more heinous than it would have been to blaspheme the Gospel
on which they had been sworn--it was a stifling of the Plot, or
discrediting of the King's witnesses--a crime not greatly, if at all,
short of high treason against the King himself.

But, of late, a new light had begun to glimmer upon the understanding
of this interpreter of the laws. Sagacious in the signs of the times, he
began to see that the tide was turn