CHAPTER XXVI
"NEITHER TREES NOR MEN"
In view of the disturbance caused among the populace by the arrest of Endymion Leer, the Senate deemed it advisable that his trial, and that of the widow Gibberty, should take precedence of all other legal business; so as soon as the two important witnesses, Peter Pease and Marjory Beach, reached Lud-in-the-Mist, it was fixed for an early date.
Never, in all the annals of Dorimare, had a trial been looked forward to with such eager curiosity. It was to begin at nine o'clock in the morning, and by seven o'clock the hall of justice was already packed, while a seething crowd thronged the courtyard and overflowed into the High Street beyond.
On the front seats sat Dame Marigold, Dame Jessamine, Dame Dreamsweet and the other wives of magistrates; the main body of the hall was occupied by tradesmen and their wives, and other quiet, well-to-do members of the community, and behind them seethed the noisy, impudent, hawking, cat-calling riff-raff—'prentices, sailors, pedlars, strumpets; showing clearly on what side were their sympathies by such ribald remarks as, "My old granny's pet cockatoo is terrible fond of cherries, I think we should tell the Town Yeomanry, and have it locked up as a smuggler," or, "Where's Mumchance! Send for Mumchance and the Mayor! Two hundred years ago an old gaffer ate a gallon of crab soup and died the same night—arrest Dr. Leer and hang him for it."
But as the clocks struck nine and Master Polydore Vigil, in his priestly-looking purple robes of office embroidered in gold with the sun and the moon and the stars, and the other ten judges clad in scarlet and ermine filed slowly in and, bowing gravely to the assembly, took their seats on the dais, silence descended on the hall; for the fear of the Law was inbred in every Dorimarite, even the most disreputable.
Nevertheless, there was a low hum of excitement when Mumchance in his green uniform, carrying an axe, and two or three others of the Town Yeomanry, marched in with the two prisoners, who took their places in the dock.
Though Endymion Leer had for long been one of the most familiar figures in Lud, all eyes were turned on him with as eager a curiosity as if he had been some savage from the Amber Desert, the first of his kind to be seen in Dorimare; and such curious tricks can the limelight of the Law play on reality that many there thought that they could see his evil sinister life writ in clear characters on his familiar features.
To the less impressionable of the spectators, however, he looked very much as usual, though perhaps a little pale and flabby about the gills. And he swept the hall with his usual impudent appraising glance, as if to say, "Linsey-woolsey, linsey-woolsey! But one must make the best of a poor material."