I listened to him, but I felt as if I was growing hopelessly confused, and that I should never be able to say a word in my defence, while when I looked at Esau, I found that he was looking at me with his forehead full of wrinkles.
“It’s all very well for him to say ‘hold up.’ He haven’t got to be tried,” he whispered. “I’m ’fraid it’s all up with us, Gordon. Wish we could be together when they sends us off.”
“Now then!” said the policeman, clapping me on the shoulder; “it’s us. Don’t you be scared. Sir Thomas is a good ’un.”
The next minute Esau and I were standing somewhere with our constable close by, and somewhere before us, in places that looked like pews, sat a number of gentlemen, some of whom wore wigs. Some were writing, and, seen as it were through a mist, a number of people looking on. Next, in a confused way, I saw a red-faced, white-headed gentleman, who took off his spectacles to have a good look at us, and put them on again to read a paper before him.
It was all dim and strange, and there was quite a singing in my ears, as I looked vacantly about while some talking went on, ending by a voice saying—
“Kiss the book.”
Then the white-headed old gentleman said—
“Well, Mr Dempster, what have you to say?”
At the name Dempster, I started and looked sharply about me, to see that my employer was a little way off, very carefully dressed, and with a glossy hat in his hand.
“That can’t be the hat,” I remember thinking, as I stared at him wildly.