ling, and two men were
facing me, one the clerk of the court, who was holding an open book. I
had an impression that they were speaking to me, still in those
monotonous, artificial voices, as if they were not saying anything with
human meaning in it, and while they spoke they held their hands up,
palm out, and I held mine. The next thing I knew I was mounting into
the little raised and railed-in seat on the left hand of the judge's
desk.

"What is it that is going to happen here?" I thought. I turned and
took the chair, and found myself facing a mass,--a monster,--numberless
heads and eyes, all gazing at me. A cold sensation of fear went over
me, like a great wave, closing my throat, and making my head feel as if
it were fitted with a cap of ice. "Oh, I can not, I can not!" I kept
repeating to myself.

But, while it still seemed to me as if I should never make another
sound, I heard a voice asking me my name. I recognized it as Mr.
Dingley's. To see him standing up there and gravely, as if he had
never seen me before, putting that question was indeed absurd. It was
impossible to be frightened with such laughable procedure. He asked me
my age, my place of residence, when he knew both very well, then, where
had I been walking when I heard the shot; and with these questions I
was familiar, having answered them all the day in the library, so it
made the speaking now a little easier. And finally when he said: "Now
tell the court and the gentlemen of the jury as well as you can
remember exactly what you saw," my only thought was, "Oh, how often I
have repeated this before! Will there never be an end of it?"

But as I began, I was aware that the judge's pen, which had been
steadily scratching ever since the court had opened, had ceased; and,
as I went on, all the rustling and whispering in the room fell silent.
The stillness made the place seem immense, and for a little while my
voice went on through the silence like a tiny thread. And now it had
stopped. I had come to the end of what I knew. It had been so small a
thing to say! But the silence was so deep I dared not look around. I
kept my eyes on Mr. Dingley's face, and thought it looked very strange
and worn.

"Can you," he began, in his ponderous official voice, each word coming
down heavily upon my ears, "Can you positively identify this person you
describe with the revolver?"

I believe that my "Yes" was a movement of the lips and a bend of the
hea