it all the year
round. To the habitue the masses are kaleidoscopic--never and yet ever
the same. Messengers,--process-servers, office boys--all the fledglings
of the law gather there in groups and blow cigarette smoke into each
other's faces. Court officials loll about the railing patronising the
managing clerks, who must cultivate them or yield all claims to
management. Big-girthed men hold one another by watch chains and lapels
and tell loud-mouthed stories of their triumphant practice. Bloated
gentlemen and shifty seek out corners to breathe moist secrets into each
other's ears. But heedless of all these a hurrying crowd is ever
streaming this way and that--here a haggard face and there a laughing
one--now a brutal type and now a mask of breeding--so they go--shuffle,
shuffle, click-a-clack, all day long, outside the halls of Justice.

Holden pushed open the swinging doors labelled

SPECIAL TERM
PART I.

and entered a small court room crowded to suffocation. Every seat was
occupied and men were standing about everywhere--jammed in between the
chairs--plastered against the wall--crushed against the rail. The
counsels' table and its two chairs were the only unoccupied bits of
furniture in the room.

The Court criers glanced despairingly at the throng and shouted
mechanically, "Gentlemen will please take seats!" and then, more
hopefully, "Gentlemen will please stop talking!"

But the babel of conversation was finally hushed by an attendant who
announced the entrance of the Judge by pounding with an ample fist upon
the panels of a door. Not a very dignified heralding of the presence of
the Court, but understood by the late comers whose view is limited to
the judicial canopy--that pall-like canopy of red rep which sets one
panting to gaze with relief at the steam-screened windows. They at least
are wet.

"_Grafton_ vs. _The Milling Companies!_"

Holden fought his way like a foot-ball player through the "rush line" of
lawyers, and as he pitched into the cleared space before the counsels'
table his impulse was to dodge the one man before him and race down "the
side-line." But he checked himself in time. Then two other young men
plunged into the open and stood somewhat breathlessly before the Bench.

"If it please the Court," began Holden, "this is a motion in a case of
great importance and----"

"All cases are equally important in this Court, Sir!"

"I reco