A lull followed. The judge, accustomed to have the eyes of men upon him, calmly betook himself to letter-writing. The high-sheriff, not so accustomed, fidgeted in his seat, looked round and counted the javelin-men in court, wondered how long the grand jury would be, and remembered, let us hope with remorse, the time when he was a grand juryman himself and wasted the time of the county by unnecessary questions to the witnesses. The fact is that the grand jury is played out. Everything for which they originally existed is now done by somebody else. Every case that comes before them now has already been investigated once by the committing magistrates. Their duty is simply to accuse the prisoner, nothing more; and it would be quite sufficient if they would just read the depositions and sign the indictment. But man, brief man, placed on a grand jury, and shut into a room without the interference of a legal authority, delights to show himself off by vain and superfluous inquiry. And hence it was that more than half an hour elapsed before the foreman was seen returning into the court with a trumpery indictment for larceny.
The interval had been usefully employed by the clerk of arraigns in compiling a petty jury, something in this fashion:
The Clerk of Arraigns (taking up a ticket, rather larger than a visiting-card, from a heap before him): ‘John Henry Mullerall!’ (To his clerk, a humble person in plebeian attire, who is popularly believed to know a great deal more about the procedure than the judge and the whole court put together): ‘Did he answer?’ (The clerk hasn’t heard him.) ‘John—Henry’ (very loudly) ‘Mull—— Oh! I see it’s Muggle’—(at the top of his voice) ‘Mugglewrath!’ (testily) ‘Are you there?’
John Henry Mugglewrath (from a seat close by): ‘Here!’
The Clerk of Arraigns: ‘Oh! there you are. Why don’t you gentlemen answer when you hear your names? Go into the box, please.’
After about ten minutes of this sort of thing, twelve respectable inhabitants of Mynyddshire were collected in the jury-box. Then they all had to stand up while their names were read over a second time. Then the clerk of arraigns counted his tickets to make sure he had used up twelve, while his clerk counted the jurymen to see that they came to the same number. Then all was ready to begin.
Meanwhile, those gentlemen at the counsel‘s table who rejoiced in the possession of briefs made a great show of reading them, and making copious notes and interlineations with pencils of different colours—red, blue, and black. The public were greatly impressed as they watched these young giants of intellect at their work. There they were, mastering the most knotty points with ease, and constructing ingenious arguments, doubtless, as they went along. One gentleman excited the greatest interest, and quite threw his brethren into the shade, by pushing aside his brief and drawing towards him one of the loose sheets of foolscap which the kind forethought of the authorities had provided, and beginning to write on it in an abstracted manner. The onlookers deemed him to be wrestling with an opinion on some weighty question bristling with legal difficulties. They little guessed that he was addressing congratulations to a maiden aunt on the occasion of her approaching birthday.
But what really occupied the minds of the spectators, and kept their lips moving in subdued conversation, was the ending of the judge’s charge.
‘He has made up his mind that she is guilty,’ whispered Mr. Jenkins, the stationer from Queen Street, who had come to the court in the capacity of a common juryman, but had not been among the names first selected.
‘And I don’t wonder at it,’ replied his neighbour, a farmer from near Porthstone, who had been summoned in the same way. ‘A bad lot, I’ll be bound. Wouldn’t say nothing when her was before the magistrates. That looks bad, don’t it?’