argument, that talking is prohibited.  The room is already full, but will be crowded when the ‘horse case’ comes on again.  Nothing is of so much interest as a ‘horse case.’  The issues raised concern almost every countryman, and the parties are generally well known.  All the idlers of the town are here, and among them many a rascal who has been, through the processes, and comes again to listen and possibly learn a dodge by which to delay the execution of judgment.  Some few of the more favoured and respectable persons have obtained entrance to the space allotted to the solicitors, and have planted themselves in a solid circle round the fire, effectually preventing the heat from benefiting anyone else.  Another fire, carefully tended by a bailiff, burns in the grate behind the Judge, but, as his seat is so far from it, without adding much to his comfort.  A chilly draught sweeps along the floor, and yet at the same time there is a close and somewhat fetid atmosphere at the height at which men breathe.  The place is ill warmed and worse ventilated; altogether without convenience, and comfortless.

To-day the Judge, to suit the convenience of the solicitors engaged in the ‘horse case,’ who have requested permission to consult in private, has asked for a short defended cause to fill up the interval till they are ready to resume.  The High Bailiff calls ‘Brown v.  Jones,’ claim 8_s_. for goods supplied.  No one at first answers, but after several calls a woman in the body of the Court comes forward.  She is partly deaf, and until nudged by her neighbours did not hear her husband’s name.  The Plaintiff is a small village dealer in tobacco, snuff, coarse groceries, candles, and so on.  His wife looks after the little shop and he works with horse and cart, hauling and doing odd jobs for the farmers.  Instead of attending himself he has sent his wife to conduct the case.  The Defendant is a labourer living in the same village, who, like so many of his class, has got into debt.  He, too, has sent his wife to represent him.  This is the usual course of the cottagers, and of agricultural people who are better off than cottagers.  The men shirk out of difficulties of this kind by going off in the morning early to their work with the parting remark, ‘Aw, you’d better see about it; I don’t knaw nothing about such jobs.’

The High Bailiff has no easy task to swear the Plaintiff’s representative.  First, she takes the book and kisses it before the formula prescribed has been repeated.  Then she waits till the sentence is finished and lifts the book with the left hand instead of the right.  The Registrar’s clerk has to go across to the box and shout an explanation into her ear.  ’Tell the truth,’ says the old lady, with alacrity; ’why, that’s what I be come for.’  The Judge asks her what it is she claims, and she replies that that man, the Registrar’s clerk, has got it all written down in his book.  She then turns to the Defendant’s wife, who stands in the box opposite, and shouts to her, ‘You knows you ain’t paid it.’