"Order in the court! His Honor the Judge of General Sessions!" bellowed an officer at this moment, and the judge came in.
Everybody got up. He bowed. Everybody bowed. Everybody sat down again. A few, deeply affected, blew their noses. Then His Honor smiled genially and asked what business there was before the court, and the clerk told him that they were all there to try a man named Higgleby for bigamy, and the judge, nodding at Caput, said to go ahead and try him.
In the bottom of his peritoneum Mr. Magnus felt that he carried a cold stone the size of a grapefruit. His hands were ice, his lips bloodless. And there was a Niagara where his hearing should have been. But he rose, just as the book told him to do, in all his beauty, and enunciated in the crystal tones he had learned during the last few weeks at Madam Winterbottom's school of acting and elocution—in syllables chiseled from the stone of eloquence by the lapidary of culture:
"If Your Honor please, I move the cause of the People of the state of New York against Theophilus Higgleby, indicted for bigamy."
Peckham and the rest couldn't believe their ears. It wasn't possible! That perfect specimen of tonsorial and sartorial art, warbling like a legal Caruso, conducting himself so naturally, easily and casually, couldn't be old Caput Magnus! They pinched themselves.
"Say!" ejaculated Peckham. "What's happened to him? When did Sir Henry sign up with us?"
Mr. Tutt across the inclosure in front of the jury box raised his bushy eyebrows and looked whimsically at the D. A. over his spectacles.
"Are you ready, Mr. Tutt?" inquired the judge.
"Entirely so, Your Honor," responded the lawyer.
"Then impanel a jury."