صفحة 132 من 896

The entrance of the Judge, and a consequent great stir and

settling down in the court, stopped the dialogue. Presently, the

dock became the central point of interest. Two gaolers, who had

been standing there, went out, and the prisoner was brought in,

and put to the bar.

Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman who looked at

the ceiling, stared at him. All the human breath in the place,

rolled at him, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire. Eager faces

strained round pillars and corners, to get a sight of him;

spectators in back rows stood up, not to miss a hair of him;

people on the floor of the court, laid their hands on the

shoulders of the people before them, to help themselves, at

anybody's cost, to a view of him--stood a-tiptoe, got upon

ledges, stood upon next to nothing, to see every inch of him.

Conspicuous among these latter, like an animated bit of the

spiked wall of Newgate, Jerry stood: aiming at the prisoner the

beery breath of a whet he had taken as he came along, and

discharging it to mingle with the waves of other beer, and gin,

and tea, and coffee, and what not, that flowed at him, and

already broke upon the great windows behind him in an impure mist

and rain.