rave, who occupies the clerk's table, is reading out the legal
rigmarole which constitutes the indictment. This is interpreted in few
words to the prisoner by a native constable standing beside the dock.
Asked to plead Guilty or Not Guilty, he merely shrugs his shoulders, and
says he doesn't know anything about the matter.

"Enter it as a plea of Not Guilty, Mr Musgrave," says the magistrate,
in an undertone. Then aloud, "Does any one appear for him? Has he got
a lawyer, Jan?"

Jan Kat, the native constable aforesaid, puts the question. The
prisoner answers voluminously, and gazes towards the door.

"He says he has, sir. Mr Darrell appears for him."

"Then why isn't Mr Darrell here?" says the Bench shortly. "Call the
prosecutor."

The latter steps into the witness-box--a tall, fair-bearded man with a
pleasant face. He deposes that his name is Charles Suffield, that he is
a farmer residing at Quaggasfontein in that district--all of which every
one there present knows as well as he does--that the prisoner is in his
service as herd--which they do not know--and then there is an
interruption, as a black-coated individual with a bundle of blue papers
and a portentous-looking law book or two, bustles into the front row of
desks and announces that he is instructed to appear for the accused.

Mr Van Stolz, the Resident Magistrate, is the most genial and
kind-hearted of men, but he is touchy on one point--a sense of the
respect due to the dignity of his court. And rightly so, bearing in
mind the casual, happy-go-lucky, let-things-slide tendency of the
dwellers in Doppersdorp, and like places.

"The case has already begun, Mr Darrell," he says shortly. "Did you
instruct the prisoner to plead guilty?"

The attorney starts, then asks rather anxiously--

"Has he pleaded guilty, your worship?"

"No, he hasn't; but he was left, in the lurch as far as his legal
adviser was concerned," retorts the Bench, with rather a cruel emphasis
on the word "legal," for the practitioners at Doppersdorp are not
precisely shining lights in their profession.

An appreciative chuckle from the audience, started by a professional
rival, greets this sally, and the Bench, mollified, accepts graciously
the defaulting attorney's excuses.

Then the prosecutor goes on to describe how he had been riding round his
farm on such and such a day, and had come upon the prisoner's flock left
to itself. Instead of shouting for the missing herd he