he did venture out he watched the corners, in order that he
might find his way back without asking questions.

And then he roamed round the squares and about the little courts, and
found out where were Stone Buildings,--so called because they are
so dull and dead and stony-hearted: and as his courage increased he
made his way into one of the courts, and stood up for a while on an
uncomfortable narrow step, so that he might watch the proceedings as
they went on, and it all seemed to him to be dull and deadly. There
was no life and amusement such as he had seen at the Assize Court in
county Cork, when he was sworn in as one of the Grand Jury. There
the gentlemen in wigs--for on the Munster circuit they do wear wigs,
or at any rate did then--laughed and winked and talked together
joyously; and when a Roman Catholic fisherman from Berehaven was
put into the dock for destroying the boat and nets of a Protestant
fisherman from Dingle in county Kerry, who had chanced to come that
way, "not fishing at all, at all, yer honour, but just souping," as
the Papist prisoner averred with great emphasis, the gentlemen of
the robe had gone to the fight with all the animation and courage
of Matadors and Picadors in a bull-ring. It was delightful to see
the way in which Roman Catholic skill combated Protestant fury,
with a substratum below of Irish fun which showed to everybody that
it was not all quite in earnest;--that the great O'Fagan and the
great Fitzberesford could sit down together afterwards with all the
pleasure in life over their modicum of claret in the barristers' room
at the Imperial hotel. And then the judge had added to the life of
the meeting, helping to bamboozle and make miserable a wretch of a
witness who had been caught in the act of seeing the boat smashed
with a fragment of rock, and was now, in consequence, being impaled
alive by his lordship's assistance.

"What do you say your name is?" demanded his lordship, angrily.

"Rowland Houghton," said the miserable stray Saxon tourist who had so
unfortunately strayed that way on the occasion.

"What?" repeated the judge, whose ears were sharper to such sounds as
O'Shaughnessy, Macgillycuddy, and O'Callaghan.

"Rowland Houghton," said the offender, in his distress; quicker,
louder, and perhaps not more distinctly than before.

"What does the man say?" said the judge, turning his head down
towards a satellite who sat on a bench beneath his cushion.

The gentleman ap