The footman who showed the aged gentleman out observed that the Judge’s mulberry-coloured face, pimples and all, were bleached to a dingy yellow, and there was the abstraction of agitated thought in his manner, as he bid the stranger good-night.  The servant saw that the conversation had been of serious import, and that the Judge was frightened.

Instead of stumping upstairs forthwith to his scandalous hilarities, his profane company, and his great china bowl of punch—­the identical bowl from which a bygone Bishop of London, good easy man, had baptised this Judge’s grandfather, now clinking round the rim with silver ladles, and hung with scrolls of lemon-peel—­instead, I say, of stumping and clambering up the great staircase to the cavern of his Circean enchantment, he stood with his big nose flattened against the window-pane, watching the progress of the feeble old man, who clung stiffly to the iron rail as he got down, step by step, to the pavement.

The hall-door had hardly closed, when the old Judge was in the hall bawling hasty orders, with such stimulating expletives as old colonels under excitement sometimes indulge in now-a-days, with a stamp or two of his big foot, and a waving of his clenched fist in the air.  He commanded the footman to overtake the old gentleman in the white wig, to offer him his protection on his way home, and in no case to show his face again without having ascertained where he lodged, and who he was, and all about him.

“By —–­, sirrah! if you fail me in this, you doff my livery to-night!”

Forth bounced the stalwart footman, with his heavy cane under his arm, and skipped down the steps, and looked up and down the street after the singular figure, so easy to recognize.

What were his adventures I shall not tell you just now.

The old man, in the conference to which he had been admitted in that stately panelled room, had just told the Judge a very strange story.  He might be himself a conspirator; he might possibly be crazed; or possibly his whole story was straight and true.

The aged gentleman in the bottle-green coat, in finding himself alone with Mr. Justice Harbottle, had become agitated.  He said,

“There is, perhaps you are not aware, my lord, a prisoner in Shrewsbury jail, charged with having forged a bill of exchange for a hundred and twenty pounds, and his name is Lewis Pyneweck, a grocer of that town.”

“Is there?” says the Judge, who knew well that there was.

“Yes, my lord,” says the old man.

“Then you had better say nothing to affect this case.  If you do, by —–­, I’ll commit you! for I’m to try it,” says the judge, with his terrible look and tone.

“I am not going to do anything of the kind, my lord; of him or his case I know nothing, and care nothing.  But a fact has come to my knowledge which it behoves you to well consider.”

“And what may that fact be?” inquired the Judge; “I’m in haste, sir, and beg you will use dispatch.”