This man, with a few others, had got a footing on a step, from which he could better see the court.  He now stepped down, and the Judge lost sight of him.

His lordship signed energetically with his hand in the direction in which this man had vanished.  He turned to the tipstaff.  His first effort to speak ended in a gasp.  He cleared his throat, and told the astounded official to arrest that man who had interrupted the court.

“He’s but this moment gone down there.  Bring him in custody before me, within ten minutes’ time, or I’ll strip your gown from your shoulders and fine the sheriff!” he thundered, while his eyes flashed round the court in search of the functionary.

Attorneys, counsellors, idle spectators, gazed in the direction in which Mr. Justice Harbottle had shaken his gnarled old hand.  They compared notes.  Not one had seen any one making a disturbance.  They asked one another if the Judge was losing his head.

Nothing came of the search.  His lordship concluded his charge a great deal more tamely; and when the jury retired, he stared round the court with a wandering mind, and looked as if he would not have given sixpence to see the prisoner hanged.

CHAPTER V

Caleb Searcher

The Judge had received the letter; had he known from whom it came, he would no doubt have read it instantaneously.  As it was he simply read the direction: 

To the Honourable
The Lord Justice
Elijah Harbottle,
One of his Majesty’s Justices of
the Honourable Court of Common Pleas.

It remained forgotten in his pocket till he reached home.

When he pulled out that and others from the capacious pocket of his coat, it had its turn, as he sat in his library in his thick silk dressing-gown; and then he found its contents to be a closely-written letter, in a clerk’s hand, and an enclosure in “secretary hand,” as I believe the angular scrivinary of law-writings in those days was termed, engrossed on a bit of parchment about the size of this page.  The letter said: 

    MR. JUSTICE HARBOTTLE,—­MY LORD,

I am ordered by the High Court of Appeal to acquaint your lordship, in order to your better preparing yourself for your trial, that a true bill hath been sent down, and the indictment lieth against your lordship for the murder of one Lewis Pyneweck of Shrewsbury, citizen, wrongfully executed for the forgery of a bill of exchange, on the ——­th day of ——­ last, by reason of the wilful perversion of the evidence, and the undue pressure put upon the jury, together with the illegal admission of evidence by your lordship, well knowing the same to be illegal, by all which the promoter of the prosecution of the said indictment, before the High Court of Appeal, hath lost his life.

And the trial of the said indictment, I am farther ordered to acquaint your lordship,