irty years'
purchase--"

"I am sorry, sir," said the Commissioner, sternly, "that you will give
me no alternative but that of committing you; such continued disrespect
of Court cannot longer be borne."

"I 'm as well in jail as anywhere else. You 've robbed me of my
property, I care little for my person. I'll never believe it's
law,--never! You may sit up with your wig and your ushers and your
criers, but you are just a set of thieves and swindlers, neither more
nor less. Talk of shame, indeed! I think some of yourselves might blush
at what you 're doing. There, there, I 'm not going to resist you," said
he to the policeman; "there's no need of roughness. Newgate is the best
place for me now. Mind," added he, turning to where the reporters for
the daily press were sitting,--"mind and say that I just offered a calm
protest against the injustice done me; that I was civilly remonstrating
with the Court upon what every man--"

Ere he could finish, he was quietly removed from the spot, and before
the excitement of the scene had subsided, he was driving away rapidly
towards Newgate.

"Drunk or mad,--which was it?" said Lord Glengariff to Davenport Dunn,
whose manner was scarcely as composed as usual.

"He has been drinking, but not to drunkenness," said Dunn, cautiously.
"He is certainly to be pitied." And now he drew nigh the bench and
whispered a few words to the Commissioner.

Whatever it was that he urged--and there was an air of entreaty in his
manner--did not seem to meet the concurrence of the judge. Dunn pleaded
earnestly, however; and at last the Commissioner said, "Let him be
brought up tomorrow, then, and having made a suitable apology to the
Court, we will discharge him." Thus ended the incident, and once more
the clerk resumed his monotonous readings. Townlands and baronies were
described, valuations quoted, rights of turbary defined, and an ancient
squirearchy sold out of their possessions with as little commotion or
excitement as a mock Claude is knocked down at Christie's. Indeed, of so
little moment was the scene we have mentioned deemed, that scarcely half
a dozen lines of the morning papers were given to its recital. The Court
and its doings were evidently popular with the country at large, and one
of the paragraphs which readers read with most pleasure was that wherein
it was recorded that estates of immense value had just changed owners,
and that the Commissioner had disposed of so many thousands'