anything. And now that I have the time, I won't
have anything to write about. I fancy that more things happened to me
today than are likely to happen again for the next eight months, so I
will make this day take up as much room in the diary as it can. I am
writing this on the back of the paper the Warder uses for his official
reports, while he is hunting up cells to put us in. We came down on him
rather unexpectedly and he is nervous.
"Of course, I had prepared myself for this after a fashion, but now I
see that somehow I never really did think I would be in here, and all
my friends outside, and everything going on just the same as though I
wasn't alive somewhere. It's like telling yourself that your horse can't
possibly pull off a race, so that you won't mind so much if he doesn't,
but you always feel just as bad when he comes in a loser. A man can't
fool himself into thinking one way when he is hoping the other.
"But I am glad it is over, and settled. It was a great bore not knowing
your luck and having the thing hanging over your head every morning
when you woke up. Indeed it was quite a relief when the counsel got all
through arguing over those proclamations, and the Chief Justice summed
up, but I nearly went to sleep when I found he was going all over it
again to the jury. I didn't understand about those proclamations myself
and I'll lay a fiver the jury didn't either. The Colonel said he didn't.
I couldn't keep my mind on what Russell was explaining about, and I
got to thinking how much old Justice Hawkins looked like the counsel in
'Alice in Wonderland' when they tried the knave of spades for stealing
the tarts. He had just the same sort of a beak and the same sort of a
wig, and I wondered why he had his wig powdered and the others didn't.
Pollock's wig had a hole in the top; you could see it when he bent over
to take notes. He was always taking notes. I don't believe he understood
about those proclamations either; he never seemed to listen, anyway.
"The Chief Justice certainly didn't love us very much, that's sure; and
he wasn't going to let anybody else love us either. I felt quite the
Christian Martyr when Sir Edward was speaking in defence. He made it
sound as though we were all a lot of Adelphi heroes and ought to be
promoted and have medals, but when Lord Russell started in to read the
Riot Act at us I began to believe that hanging was too good for me. I'm
sure I never knew I was disturbing the peace of
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