“Leave that to me, Con,” said Mr. Morissy, “and go down to yer breakfast.”
I did as I was bid, and never stirred out of the house the whole day, nor for eight days after; when one morning Morissy bid me clean myself, and brush my hair, to come with him to the Court-house.
I guessed at once what was going to happen; and now, as my head was healed, and all my bruises cured, I'd very gladly have forgiven all the affair, and gone home again with my father; but it was too late. As Mr. Morissy said, with a grin, “The law is an elegant contrivance; a child's finger can set it in motion, but a steam engine could not hold it back afterwards!”
The Court was very full that morning; there were five magistrates on the bench, and Mr. Ball in the middle of them. There were a great many farmers, too, for it was market-day; and numbers of the townspeople, who all knew my father, and were not sorry to see him “up.” Cregan versus Cregan stood third on the list of cases; and very little interest attached to the two that preceded it. At last it was called; and there I stood before the Bench, with five hundred pair of eyes all bent upon me; and two of them actually looking through my very brain,—for they were my father's, as he stood at the opposite side of the table below the Bench.
The case was called an assault, and very soon terminated; for, by my own admission, it was clear that I deserved punishment; though probably not so severely as it had been inflicted. The judge delivered a very impressive lesson to my father and myself, about our respective duties, and dismissed the case with a reproof, the greater share of which fell to me. “You may go now, sir,” said he, winding up a line peroration; “fear God and honor the king; respect your parents, and make your capitals smaller.”
“Before your worship dismisses the witness,” said Morissy, “I wish to put a few questions to him.”
“The case is disposed of: call the next,” said the judge, angrily.
“I have a most important fact to disclose to your worship,—one which is of the highest importance to the due administration of justice,—one which, if suffered to lie in obscurity, will be a disgrace to the law, and a reproach to the learned Bench.”
“Call the next case, crier,” said the judge. “Sit down, Mr. Morissy.”
“Your worshipw may commit me; but I will be heard—”