wrinkles; and the front row was completed by a chemist.  The three immediately behind, Mr. Bosengate did not thoroughly master; but the three at the end of the second row he learned in their order of an oldish man in a grey suit, given to winking; an inanimate person with the mouth of a moustachioed codfish, over whose long bald crown three wisps of damp hair were carefully arranged; and a dried, dapperish, clean-shorn man, whose mouth seemed terrified lest it should be surprised without a smile.  Their first and second verdicts were recorded without the necessity for withdrawal, and Mr. Bosengate was already sleepy when the third case was called.  The sight of khaki revived his drooping attention.  But what a weedy-looking specimen!  This prisoner had a truly nerveless pitiable dejected air.  If he had ever had a military bearing it had shrunk into him during his confinement.  His ill-shaped brown tunic, whose little brass buttons seemed trying to keep smiling, struck Mr. Bosengate as ridiculously short, used though he was to such things.  ‘Absurd,’ he thought—­’Lumbago!  Just where they ought to be covered!’ Then the officer and gentleman stirred in him, and he added to himself:  ‘Still, there must be some distinction made!’ The little soldier’s visage had once perhaps been tanned, but was now the colour of dark dough; his large brown eyes with white showing below the iris, as so often in the eyes of very nervous people—­wandered from face to face, of judge, counsel, jury, and public.  There were hollows in his cheeks, his dark hair looked damp; around his neck he wore a bandage.  The commercial traveller on Mr. Bosengate’s left turned, and whispered:  “Felo de se!  My hat! what a guy!” Mr. Bosengate pretended not to hear—­he could not bear that fellow!—­and slowly wrote on a bit of paper:  “Owen Lewis.”  Welsh!  Well, he looked it—­not at all an English face.  Attempted suicide—­not at all an English crime!  Suicide implied surrender, a putting-up of hands to Fate—­to say nothing of the religious aspect of the matter.  And suicide in khaki seemed to Mr. Bosengate particularly abhorrent; like turning tail in face of the enemy; almost meriting the fate of a deserter.  He looked at the prisoner, trying not to give way to this prejudice.  And the prisoner seemed to look at him, though this, perhaps, was fancy.

The Counsel for the prosecution, a little, alert, grey, decided man, above military age, began detailing the circumstances of the crime.  Mr. Bosengate, though not particularly sensitive to atmosphere, could perceive a sort of current running through the Court.  It was as if jury and public were thinking rhythmically in obedience to the same unexpressed prejudice of which he himself was conscious.  Even the Caesar-like pale face up there, presiding, seemed in its ironic serenity responding to that current.