The judgment-seat was not imposing. It was a long, low, ill-lighted chamber, with a sort of raised counter at one end, behind which sat three elderly men, dressed like master sweeps,—that is, of the old days of climbing-boys. The prisoners were confined in a thing like a fold, and there leaned against one end of the same pen as ourselves, a square-built, thick-set man of about eight-and-forty, or fifty, dressed in a suit of coarse drab, and whom, notwithstanding an immense red beard and moustache, a clear blue eye and broad brow proclaimed to be English. He was being interrogated as we entered, but from his total ignorance of German the examination was not proceeding very glibly.
“You 're an Englishman, ain't you?” cried he, as I came in. “You can speak High Dutch, perhaps?”
“I can speak German well enough to be intelligible, sir.”
“All right,” said he, in the same free-and-easy tone. “Will you explain to those old beggars there that they 're making fools of themselves. Here's how it is. My passport was made out for two; for Thomas Harpar, that's me, and Sam Bigges. Now, because Sam Rigges ain't here, they tell me I can't be suffered to proceed. Ain't that stupid? Did you ever hear the like of that for downright absurdity before?”
“But where is he?”
“Well, I don't mind telling you, because you 're a countryman; but I don't like blackening an Englishman to one of those confounded foreigners. Rigges has run.”
“What do you mean by 'run'?”
“I mean, cut his stick; gone clean away; and what's worse, too, carried off a stout bag of dollars with him that we had for our journey.”
“Whither were you going?”
“That's neither here nor there, and don't concern you in any respect What you 've to do is, explain to the old cove yonder,—the fellow in the middle is the worst of them,—tell him it's all right, that I 'm Harpar, and that the other ain't here; or, look here, I 'll tell you what's better, do you be Rigges, and it's all right.”