ew ground. I would go; in fine I went. On the evening of
an exceptionally hot July day, I felt there might be worse places than
Mr. Warren's breezy cricket ground alongside Notting Barn Farm; so six
o'clock, the hour when the chair was to be taken, found me at the
spot--first of the outer world--and forestalled only by a solitary
Tichbornite. How I knew that the gentleman in question deserved that
appellation I say not; but I felt instinctively that such was the case.
He had a shiny black frock-coat on, like a well-to-do artisan out for a
holiday, and a roll of paper protruding from his pocket I rightly
inferred to be a Tichborne petition for signature. As soon as we got on
the ground, and I was enjoying the sensation of the crisp well rolled
turf beneath my feet, a man hove in sight with a table, and this
attracted a few observers. A gentleman in a light coat, too, who was
serenely gazing over the hedge at the Kensington Park Cricket Club in
the next ground, was, they informed me, Mr. Guildford Onslow. The
presiding genius of the place, however, was Mrs. Warren, who, arrayed
in a gown of emerald green--as though she were attending a Fenian
meeting--bustled about in a state of intense excitement until the
greengrocer's cart, which was to serve as a rostrum, had arrived. When
this occurred, the table and half a dozen Windsor chairs were hoisted
into it; another table was arranged below the van, with the Tichborne
Petition outspread upon it; and I fancied that arrangements were
complete.

Not so, however. The gentleman in the shiny coat and emerald green Mrs.
Warren between them tin-tacked up a long scroll or "legend" along the
rim of the van, consisting of the text from Psalm xxxv. 11:--"False
witnesses did rise up against me. They laid to my charge things that I
knew not." The association of ideas was grotesque, I know, but really as
Mrs. Warren and the shiny artisan were nailing this strip to the
greengrocer's van, they put me very much in mind of a curate and a lady
friend "doing decorations" at Christmas or Eastertide. Nor was this all.
When the "strange device" was duly tin-tacked, some workmen brought four
long pieces of quartering, and a second strip of white calico with
letters stuck on it was nailed to these; and when the stalwart fellows
hoisted it in air and tied the two centre pieces of wood to the wheels
of the greengrocer's cart, I found that it consisted of the Ninth
Commandment. The self-sacrificing carpe