“Signify, gentlemen, signify!” cried the genial usher, and all but Mr. Clarkson held up a hand.

“Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve,” counted the usher, totting up the hands till he reached a majority.  “True Bill, True Bill!  Next case.  Page eleven, number fifty-two.”

“Do you mean to tell me that is all?” asked Mr. Clarkson, turning to his neighbour.

“Say no more, and I’ll make it a quart,” replied the red-faced man, ticking off the last case and turning up the new one, in which a doctor was already giving his evidence against a woman charged with the wilful murder of her newly-born male child.

“Signify, gentlemen, signify!” cried the usher.  “Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve.  True Bill, True Bill!  Next case.  Page fourteen, number seventy-two.”

“Stop a moment,” stammered Mr. Clarkson, half rising; “if you please, stop one moment.  I wish to ask if we are justified in rushing through questions of life and death in this manner.  What do we know of this woman, for instance—­her history, her distress, her state of mind?”

“Sit down!” cried some.  “Oh, shut it!” cried others.  All looked at him with the amused curiosity of people in a tramcar looking at a talkative child.  The usher bustled across the room, and said in a loud and reassuring whisper:  “All them things has got nothing to do with you, sir.  Those is questions for the Judge and Petty Jury upstairs.  The magistrates have sat on all these cases already and committed them for trial; so all you’ve got to do is to find a True Bill, and you can’t go wrong.”

“If we can’t go wrong, there’s no merit in going right,” protested Mr. Clarkson.

“Next case.  Page fourteen, number seventy-two,” shouted the usher again, and as the witness was a Jew, his hat was sent for.  “There’s a lot of history behind that hat,” said Mr. Clarkson, wishing to propitiate public opinion.

“Wish that was all there was behind it,” said the juror on his left.  The Jew finished his evidence and went away.  The foreman glanced round, and the usher had already got as far as “Signify,” when a venerable juror, prompted by Mr. Clarkson’s example, interposed.

“I should like to ask that witness one further question,” he said in a fine Scottish accent, and after considerable shouting, the Jew was recalled.

“I should like to ask you, my man,” said the venerable juror, “how you spell your name?” The name was spelt, the juror carefully inscribed it on a blank space opposite the charge, sighed with relief, and looked round.  “Signify, gentlemen, signify!” cried the usher.  “Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve.  True Bill, True Bill!  Next case.  Page six, number eleven.”

Number eleven was a genuine murder case, and sensation pervaded the room when the murdered man’s wife was brought in, weeping.  She sobbed out the oath, and the foreman, wishing to be kind, said, encouragingly, “State briefly what you know of this case.”