ic, was placed a gray-bearded man at a table also
covered with green baize, that emblem of authority. And to the side, at
right angles, raised into the air, sat a little terrier of a man, with
gingery, wired hair, obviously the more articulate soul of these
proceedings. As Felix sat down to worship, he noticed Mr. Pogram at the
green baize table, and received from the little man a nod and the
faintest whiff of lavender and gutta-percha. The next moment he caught
sight of Derek and Sheila, screwed sideways against one of the
distempered walls, looking, with their frowning faces, for all the world
like two young devils just turned out of hell. They did not greet him,
and Felix set to work to study the visages of Justice. They impressed
him, on the whole, more favorably than he had expected. The one to his
extreme left, with a gray-whiskered face, was like a large and sleepy cat
of mature age, who moved not, except to write a word now and then on the
paper before him, or to hand back a document. Next to him, a man of
middle age with bald forehead and dark, intelligent eyes seemed conscious
now and again of the body of the court, and Felix thought: 'You have not
been a magistrate long.' The chairman, who sat next, with the moustache
of a heavy dragoon and gray hair parted in the middle, seemed, on the
other hand, oblivious of the public, never once looking at them, and
speaking so that they could not hear him, and Felix thought: 'You have
been a magistrate too long.' Between him and the terrier man, the last
of the four wrote diligently, below a clean, red face with clipped white
moustache and little peaked beard. And Felix thought: 'Retired naval!'
Then he saw that they were bringing in Tryst. The big laborer advanced
between two constables, his broad, unshaven face held high, and his
lowering eyes, through which his strange and tragical soul seemed
looking, turned this way and that. Felix, who, no more than any one
else, could keep his gaze off the trapped creature, felt again all the
sensations of the previous afternoon.

"Guilty? or, Not guilty?" As if repeating something learned by heart,
Tryst answered: "Not guilty, sir." And his big hands, at his sides, kept
clenching and unclenching. The witnesses, four in number, began now to
give their testimony. A sergeant of police recounted how he had been
first summoned to the scene of burning, and afterward arrested Tryst; Sir
Gerald's agent described the evicti