In the several robing-rooms counsel were dressing like other actors for their parts.
The judge was arraying himself in his robes of office, and everybody appeared to be engaged on some important business.
A court of justice is built everywhere much in the same fashion—a throne for the judge, benches right and left for the sheriff and municipal authorities, boxes on each side for the juries, separate pews for the warder and clerk of the court, convenient seats for the barristers. Then there is the witness-box, the dock, and benches piled tier over tier for the convenience of the spectators, and, as a matter of course, the ventilation is radically bad.
There is also a stone hall outside in which clients congregate till their turn comes on, and witness-rooms.
In addition to this, British witnesses seem to possess an inexhaustible supply of sandwiches in brown paper, and ardent spirits in old medicine bottles: upon these they feed incessantly, partly to kill time, and partly to fortify their moral courage, which they know will soon be tried in public as severely as the integrity of the prisoners.
Up and down a passage which leads to the jury-room and to the private entrances into the court, one may see the attorneys in their Sunday shabby-genteel, and in great bustle and importance, running backwards and forwards, now halting to confab with gentlemen who are relations of the prisoners, or are subpœnaed witnesses—now with the barristers who wear stereotyped smiles upon their faces, as if law life was a pleasant dream.
The judge entered the court and the usual formulæ had to be gone through. The benches appointed for the use of barristers were tolerably well filled.
The first case to be tried was a charge of embezzlement. It did not occupy a great space of time, as it was as clear as the sun at noon-day—that is on days that luminary does condescend to shine.
Peace was anxiously waiting his turn with two other fellow-prisoners. To his ineffable disgust one of these was the lad “Cakey,” as he was termed, who had so annoyed him in the exercise-yard. He was charged with picking pockets, in the practice of which he was an adept.
“Strike me lucky,” said the audacious young ruffian. “I hopes as how they won’t keep us waiting long—don’t you?”