pealed to pronounced the name for the judge's hearing
with a full rolling Irish brogue, that gave great delight through all
the court; "R-rowland Hough-h-ton, me lor-r-d."

Whereupon his lordship threw up his hands in dismay. "Oulan Outan!"
said he. "Oulan Outan! I never heard such a name in my life!" And
then, having thoroughly impaled the wicked witness, and added
materially to the amusement of the day, the judge wrote down the
name in his book; and there it is to this day, no doubt, Oulan Outan.
And when one thinks of it, it was monstrous that an English witness
should go into an Irish law court with such a name as Rowland
Houghton.

But here, in the dark dingy court to which Herbert had penetrated
in Lincoln's Inn, there was no such life as this. Here, whatever
skill there might be, was of a dark subterranean nature, quite
unintelligible to any minds but those of experts; and as for fury or
fun, there was no spark either of one or of the other. The judge sat
back in his seat, a tall, handsome, speechless man, not asleep, for
his eye from time to time moved slowly from the dingy barrister who
was on his legs to another dingy barrister who was sitting with his
hands in his pockets, and with his eyes fixed upon the ceiling. The
gentleman who was in the act of pleading had a huge open paper in
his hand, from which he droned forth certain legal quiddities of the
dullest and most uninteresting nature. He was in earnest, for there
was a perpetual energy in his drone, as a droning bee might drone who
was known to drone louder than other drones. But it was a continuous
energy supported by perseverance, and not by impulse; and seemed to
come of a fixed determination to continue the reading of that paper
till all the world should be asleep. A great part of the world around
was asleep; but the judge's eye was still open, and one might say
that the barrister was resolved to go on till that eye should have
become closed in token of his success.

Herbert remained there for an hour, thinking that he might learn
something that would be serviceable to him in his coming legal
career; but at the end of the hour the same thing was going on,--the
judge's eye was still open, and the lawyer's drone was still
sounding; and so he came away, having found himself absolutely dozing
in the uncomfortable position in which he was standing.

At last the day wore away, and at seven o'clock he found himself in
Mr. Prendergast's hall in Bloomsbur