ren to
school, made out an attendance order upon another, mulcted a youth in
five shillings for riding a bicycle without a light, charged a navvy
ten shillings and costs for use of indelicate language (total,
seventeen and sixpence), and threatened, but did not punish, a farmer
with imprisonment for working a horse 'when,' as the charge put it
ambiguously, 'in an unfit state.' He wound up by transferring an
alehouse licence, still in his stride, beamed around and observed
'That concludes our business, I think--eh, Mr Clerk?'

'Supplementary cases, y'r Worship,' murmured the Clerk. 'If I may
remind--paper handed to y'r Worship--'

'Eh? Yes, to be sure--'

'Number of cases, drunk and disorderly: arising--as I understand--out
of Regatta held yesterday at Kirris-vean.'

The Superintendent arose. He is an amazingly tall man, and it seemed
to me that he took an amazingly long time in arising to his full
height.

'Impossible to accommodate them all in the cells, y'r Worship.
If I may say so, the police were hard worked all night.
Mercifully'--the Superintendent laid stress on the word, and I shall
always, when I think of it, remember to thank him--'the most of 'em
were _blind_. We laid 'em out on the floor of the charge-room, and
with scarcely an exception, as I am credibly informed, they've come
to, more or less.'

'Kirris-vean?' I saw Sir Felix's hands grip the arms of his chair.
Then he put them out and fumbled with his papers. Lord Rattley
obligingly pushed forward his copy of the list.

'Shall I have the defendants brought into Court at once?' asked the
Superintendent. 'The constables tell me that they are--er--mostly,
by this time, in a condition to understand, for all practical
purposes, the meaning of an oath.'

Sir Felix has--as I have hinted--his foibles. But he is an English
gentleman and a man of courage. He gasped, waved a hand, and sat up
firmly.

He must have needed courage indeed, as the sorry culprits filed into
Court: for I verily believe he felt more shame than they, though
their appearance might be held to prove this impossible. The police
at about eleven o'clock had raided the booth of that respectable
landlord, Mr Bates ('Which,' observed the Superintendent, stonily,
'we may 'ave somethink to say to 'im, as it were, by-and-by') and had
culled some of them--even as one picks the unresisting primrose,
others not without recourse to persuasion. 'Many of 'em,' the
Superintendent expl