The officer at once produced the Urchin from nowhere in particular, as a conjurer produces half-crowns. The boy looked rather large among the Little People, but otherwise he was much as Fiona had last seen him; his shirt and knickerbockers were covered with earthstains and he still had the same length of useless rope coiled round his waist.
But Jeconiah? Was this the prosperous financier, this wretched apology for a living being which the officer held out on the palm of his hand? Not two inches high, its white waistcoat hanging in loose flaps, speechless, and wide-eyed with terror and abject entreaty, it was like the ghost of a parody; the officer had to set it on one of the great toadstools, and mark the place with a stick, lest it should be lost. The King regarded it with interest.
"I understood that the elder prisoner was a very stout man," he said.
"That was so, your Majesty," said the officer. "He was so stout that we thought it useless to attempt to take him through the doorway as he was, so we left his body behind and only brought away the essential part of him. This is all that there really is of him, sire; the rest was wind. When we began to sift him we were afraid that he had no real existence at all, and that there would be nothing to bring before you."
"Well, well," said the King, "there's enough of him to be tried, anyhow. Are the prisoners provided with counsel?"
The Public Prosecutor was understood to say that they were not yet represented.
"Counsel had better be assigned them in the usual way," said the King. "Catch, somebody."
He took a guinea from his pocket and flung it, apparently without looking, into the crowd. But thick as the crowd was, the guinea passed straight through the forest of hands held out for it, and fell into a tiny brown hand behind them. Fiona knew where she had seen that hand before.
The owner of the hand at once stepped forward into the ring. He seemed to be the most singular being in Fairyland. Fiona's first impression was that he was just a large bald head, the color of parchment and wrinkled all over; and this impression remained, even when she realized that he did possess a small body, with the usual allowance of arms and legs. Out of his great head looked a pair of quite incongruous eyes, bright as beads, and full of happy drollery. Behind him came a couple of stout goblins, each laden with dusty law books. They piled the books up in a stack on the ground, and the singular creature with the head proceeded to climb to the top of the stack, where he sat down, cracking his fingers and laughing hugely at some jest of his own, evidently on the best of terms both with himself and his audience. Then he caught Fiona's eye, and deliberately winked at her; but somehow it carried no offence, for the creature seemed absolutely free from malice.
"Privilege honorable profession defend oppressed," he remarked; "duty clients submit large number points," and he patted the books he sat on. He had a habit of clipping his words as he spoke which was totally destructive of the smaller parts of speech, and made his remarks sound like a series of unedited cablegrams.