d
flesh-coloured stockings at the extremities. Within the coach, and
facing the horses, sat the two judges of the Crown Court and _Nisi
Prius_, both in scarlet, with full wigs and little round patches of
black plaister, like ventilators, on top; facing their lordships sat
Sir Felix Felix-Williams, the sheriff, in a tightish uniform of the
yeomanry with a great shako nodding on his knees, and a chaplain bolt
upright by his side. Behind trooped a rabble of loafers and small
boys, who shouted, "Who bleeds bran?" till the lackeys' calves itched
with indignation.

I was standing in the archway of the Packhorse Inn, among the maids
and stable-boys gathered to see the pageant pass on its way to hear
the Assize sermon. And standing there, I was witness of a little
incident that seemed to escape the rest.

At the moment when the trumpets rang out, a very old woman, in a blue
camlet cloak, came hobbling out of a grocer's shop some twenty yards
up the pavement, and tottered down ahead of the procession as fast as
her decrepit legs would move. There was no occasion for hurrying to
avoid the crowd; for the javelin-men had barely rounded the corner
of the long street, and were taking the goosestep very seriously
and deliberately. But she went by the Packhorse doorway as if swift
horsemen were after her, clutching the camlet cloak across her bosom,
glancing over her shoulder, and working her lips inaudibly. I could
not help remarking the position of her right arm. She held it bent
exactly as though she held an infant to her old breast, and shielded
it while she ran.

A few paces beyond the inn-door she halted on the edge of the kerb,
flung another look up the street, and darted across the roadway. There
stood a little shop--a watchmaker's--just opposite, and next to the
shop a small ope with one dingy window over it. She vanished up the
passage, at the entrance of which I was still staring idly, when, half
a minute later, a skinny trembling hand appeared at the window and
drew down the blind.

I looked round at the men and maids; but their eyes were all for the
pageant, now not a stone's-throw away.

"Who is that old woman?" I asked, touching Caleb, the head ostler, on
the shoulder.

Caleb--a small bandy-legged man, with a chin full of furrows, and the
furrows full of grey stubble--withdrew his gaze grudgingly from the
sheriff's coach.

"What woman?"

"She that went by a moment since."

"She in the blue cloak, d'ee mean?