“Did he guide her hand?”

“No.”

“Did he touch her hand at all?”

“I think he did just touch her hand.”

“When he did touch her hand was she dead?”

At this last question the woman turned terribly pale, was seen to falter, and fell in a swoon on the ground, and so revealed the truth which she had come to deny.

CHAPTER XLI.

MR.J.L.  TOOLE ON THE BENCH.

Sir Henry Hawkins was sitting at Derby Assizes in the Criminal Court, which, as usual in country towns, was crowded so that you could scarcely breathe, while the air you had to breathe was like that of a pestilence.  There was, however, a little space left behind the dock which admitted of the passage of one man at a time.

Windows and doors were all securely closed, so as to prevent draught, for nothing is so bad as draught when you are hot, and nothing makes you so hot as being stived by hundreds in a narrow space without draught.

He happened to look up into the faces of this shining but by no means brilliant assembly, when what should he observe peeping over the shoulders of two buxom factory women with blue kerchiefs but the head of J.L.  Toole!  At least, it looked like Mr. Toole’s head; but how it came there it was impossible to say.  It was a delight anywhere, but it seemed now out of place.

The marshal asked the Sheriff, “Isn’t that Toole?”

The answer was, “It looks like him.”

We knew he was in the town, and that there was to be a bespeak night, when her Majesty’s Judges and the Midland Circuit would honour, etc.  Derby is not behind other towns in this respect.

Presently the Judge’s eyes went in the direction of the object which excited so much curiosity, and, like every one else, he was interested in the appearance of the great comedian, although at that moment he was not acting a part, but enduring a situation.

In the afternoon the actor was on the Bench sitting next to the marshal, and assuming an air of great gravity, which would have become a Judge of the greatest dignity.  There was never the faintest suggestion of a smile.  He looked, indeed, like Byron’s description of the Corsair:—­

  “And where his frown of hatred darkly fell,
  Hope, withering, fled, and Mercy sighed farewell.”

A turkey-cock in a pulpit could not have seemed more to dominate the proceedings.

One very annoying circumstance occurred at this Assize.  It was the cracking, sometimes almost banging, of the seats and wainscoting, which had been remade of oak.  Every now and again there was a loud squeak, and then a noise like the cracking of walnuts.  To a sensitive mind it must have been a trying situation, as Toole afterwards said, when you are trying prisoners.

Meanwhile Sir Henry pursued the even tenor of his way, speaking little, as was his wont, and thinking much about the case before him, of a very trumpery character, unless you measured it by the game laws.  But no one less liked to be disturbed by noises of any kind than Sir Henry when at work.  Even the rustling of a newspaper would cause him to direct the reader to study in some other part of the building.