The sergeant’s order, prompted by the entrance of the two Justices of the Peace, was the occasion of all present rising to attention, in customary deference to police-court rules.  One of the newcomers, dressed in the neat blue-serge uniform of an inspector of the Force, was familiar to Redmond as Inspector Kilbride, who had been recently transferred to L Division from a northern district.  He had close-cropped gray hair and a clipped, grizzled moustache.  Though apparently nearing middle-age he still possessed the slim, wiry, active figure of a man long inured to the saddle.

The appearance of his judicial confrere fairly startled George.  He was a huge fellow, fully as tall and as heavy a man as Slavin, though not so compactly-built or erect as the latter.  Still, his wide, loosely-hung, slightly bowed shoulders suggested vast strength, and his leisurely though active movements indicated absolute muscular control.  But it was the strangely sombre, mask-like face which excited Redmond’s interest most.  Beneath the broad, prominent brow of a thinker a pair of deep-set, shadowy dark eyes peered forth, with the lifeless, unwinking stare of an owl.  Between them jutted a large, bony beak of a nose, with finely-cut nostrils.  The pitiless set of the powerful jaw was only partially concealed by an enormous drooping moustache, the latter reddish in colour and streaked with gray, like his thinning, carefully brushed hair.  His age was hard to determine.  Somewhere around forty-five, George decided, as he regarded with covert interest Ruthven Gully, Esq., gentleman-rancher and Justice of the Peace for the district.

The two Justices took their places with magisterial decorum, the witnesses seated themselves again, and, all being ready, the sergeant opened the court with its time-honoured formula.

The inspector glanced over the various “informations” and handed them over to his confrere for perusal.  A brief whispered colloquy ensued between them, and then the local justice settled himself back in his chair, chin in hand.  Inspector Kilbride addressed the prisoner who had remained standing between Yorke and Redmond, and in a clear, passionless voice proceeded to read out the several charges.

“Do you wish to ask for a remand, Moran?” he enquired, “to enable you to procure counsel?”

“No, sir!” Moran’s sullen, insolent eyes suddenly encountering a dangerous, steely glare from Kilbride’s gray orbs he wilted and immediately dropped his belligerent attitude.  “No use me hirin’ a mouthpiece,” he added, “as I’m a-goin’ t’ plead guilty t’ all them charges.”

“Ah!” The inspector thoughtfully conned over the “informations” once more.  “Sergeant Slavin,” said he presently, “what are the particulars of this man’s disorderly conduct?”

He listened awhile to the sergeant’s evidence, occasionally asking a question or two, but Mr. Gully remained in the same silent, brooding, inscrutable attitude which he had adopted at the commencement of the proceedings.  Though apparently listening keenly, his shadowy eyes betrayed no interest whatever in the case.