ing. But it gave way again before him.

He called on them to give more room. He stooped and, spreading the rug
over the girl's body, lifted and laid her in the straw of the cart.
A constable would have interfered. The Collector swung round on him.

"You are taking her back to the Court-house? Well, I have business
there too. Where is your Court-house?"

The constable pointed.

"Up the road? I am obliged to you. Drive on, if you please."

Chapter X.

THE BENCH.

The wooden Jail and the wooden Court-house of Port Nassau faced one
another across an unpaved grass-grown square planted with maples.
To-day--for the fall of the leaf was at hand--these maples flamed with
hectic yellows and scarlets; and indeed thousands of leaves, stripped by
the recent gales, already strewed the cross-walks and carpeted the
ground about the benches disposed in the shade--pleasant seats to which,
of an empty afternoon, wives brought their knitting and gossiped while
their small children played within sight; haunts, later in the day, of
youths who whittled sticks or carved out names with jack-knives--ancient
solace of the love-stricken; rarely thronged save when some transgressor
was brought to the stocks or the whipping-post.

These instruments of public discipline stood on the northern side of the
square, before the iron-studded door of the Jail. The same hand, may
be, that had blackened over the Jail's weather-boarded front with a coat
of tar, had with equal propriety whitewashed the facade of the
Court-house; an immaculate building, set in the cool shade, its
straight-lined front broken only by a recessed balcony, whence, as
occasion arose, Mr. George Bellingham, Chief Magistrate, delivered the
text of a proclamation, royal or provincial, or declared the poll when
the people of Port Nassau chose their Selectmen.

This morning Mr. Bellingham held session within, in the long, airy
Court-room, and dispensed justice with the help of three
fellow-magistrates--Mr. Trask, Mr. Somershall, and our friend
Mr. Wapshott. They sat at a long baize-covered table, with the
Justices' Clerk to advise them. On the wall behind and above their
heads hung a framed panel emblazoned with the royal escutcheon, the lion
and unicorn for supporters, an inscription in old French to the effect
that there is shame in evil-thinking, and another:--

CAR II.

FID DEF.

distributed among the four corners of