ts by putting your
feet into the holes," rejoined Lord Dacre, carelessly. In a trice the
Chief Justice was sitting on the ground with his feet some fifteen
inches above the level of his seat, and his ankles encircled by hard
wood. "Now, Dacre!" he exclaimed, enthusiastically, "fasten the bolts,
and leave me for ten minutes." Like a courteous host Lord Dacre complied
with the whim of his guest, and having placed it beyond his power to
liberate himself bade him 'farewell' for ten minutes. Intending to
saunter along the lane and return at the expiration of the stated
period, Lord Dacre moved away, and falling into one of his customary
fits of reverie, soon forgot all about the stocks, his friend's freak,
and his friend. In the meantime the Chief Justice went through every
torture of an agonizing punishment--acute shootings along the confined
limbs, aching in the feet, angry pulsations under the toes, violent
cramps in the muscles and thighs, gnawing pain at the point where his
person came in immediate contact with the cold ground, pins-and-needles
everywhere. Amongst the various forms of his physical discomfort,
faintness, fever, giddiness, and raging thirst may be mentioned. He
implored a peasant to liberate him, and the fellow answered with a shout
of derision; he hailed a passing clergyman, and explained that he was
not a culprit, but Lord Camden, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and
one of Lord Dacre's guests. "Ah!" observed the man of cloth, not so much
answering the wretched culprit as passing judgment on his case, "mad
with liquor. Yes, drunkenness is sadly on the increase; 'tis droll,
though, for a drunkard in the stocks to imagine himself a Chief
Justice!" and on he passed. A farmer's wife jogged by on her pillion,
and hearing the wretched man exclaim that he should die of thirst, the
good creature gave him a juicy apple, and hoped that his punishment
would prove for the good of his soul. Not ten minutes, but ten hours did
the Chief Justice sit in the stocks, and when at length he was carried
into Lord Dacre's house, he was in no humor to laugh at his own
miserable plight. Not long afterwards he presided at a trial in which a
workman brought an action against a magistrate who had wrongfully placed
him in the stocks. The counsel for the defence happening to laugh at the
statement of the plaintiff, who maintained that he had suffered intense
pain during his confinement, Lord Camden leaned forwards and inquired in
a