before the mob: it was just a pinch of
spice added to the savourless condiment of every-day life. Then there
were the others: those who had come just out of idle curiosity to hear
a few unpleasant details, or to read a few unwholesome pages in the
book of life of people who lived in a different world to their own.

Ridiculous they seemed, all of them! Louisa felt a sudden desire to
laugh aloud, as she realized how very like a theatre the place was,
with its boxes, its stalls, and its galleries. But in this case those
who usually sat in stalls or boxes, displaying starched shirt-fronts,
bare shoulders, and bad manners, they were the actors now made to move
or dance or sing, to squirm or to suffer for the delectation of pit
and gallery.

On the left a group of young men with keen young faces, all turned
toward Luke and toward Louisa and her father. Note-books protruded out
of great-coat pockets, fountain pens and indelible pencils snuggled
close to hand. Lucky the lightning artist who could sketch for the
benefit of his journalistic patrons a rough outline of the gentleman
with more than one foot in the dock. Close by, a couple of boys in
blue uniform, with wallet at the side and smart pill-box cap on the
head, stood ready to take messages, fractions of news, hurried reports
to less-favoured mortals whose duty or desire kept them away from this
scene of poignant interest.

Louisa saw them all, as in a vivid dream. Never afterward could she
believe that it had all been reality: the coroner, the jury, the group
of journalists, the idle, whispering, pushing crowd, the loud murmurs
which now and again reached her ear:

"Oh! you may take it from me that to-morrow he'll stand in the dock."

"Such brazen indifference I've never seen."

"And they've actually found the dagger with which he murdered the
wretched man."

"Brrr! it makes me feel quite creepy."

"Yes, he was at your At Home, dear, wasn't he? a week ago."

"Oh! one had to ask him for form's sake, you know."

"Poor Lord Radclyffe, what a terrible blow for him."

"They say he'll never recover his speech or the use of his limbs."

"Silence there!"

The cackling herd of geese stopped its whisperings, astonished at
being thus reproved. Louisa again felt that irrepressible desire to
laugh, they were so funny, she thought, so irresponsible! these people
who had come to gape at Luke.

Now they were silent and orderly at the bidding of authority. An old
woman,