scene in the court below. He contemplated it as one looks at the play from a box on the first tier. The man near to him in dark-belted uniform had told him that he could sit down now if he pleased, but he preferred to stand and rest his chin on the wooden ledge. He felt content with the situation, for downstairs he had had an interview with the solicitor instructing Mellish—that was young Mellish below there in the second row of pews, looking wise in his barrister's wig, as though there were no such things as a little villa at Denmark Hill and a cheerful, romping young wife to play bat-and-ball with on a lawn at the back—and an interview with Finnis (Finnis out of view in the tightly-packed triangular crowd at the corner entrance), and each had assured him that Caroline had no knowledge of his arrest, and so far as lay within the powers of themselves and Dowton, knowledge should be kept from her. Miss Ladd joined the men in the secret, but Miss Ladd in regard to a secret was as good as a man. A terrible steamboat accident occupied nearly all the space in the daily journals; Alfred's trial, if reported at all, would be noticed briefly with the inaccuracies that usually attend such reporting. At the police-court hearing an economical press-man had written the name as Bates. Excellent luck!
The shaft of autumn sunlight came from the high windows above the heads of the jury (now turning to each other in consultation), illuminating the principal actors in precisely the way that the limelight used to concentrate itself on the leading man in melodramas at the Greenwich Theatre. They were all down there in the well of the court, the white-haired railway detective, now looking grave excepting when he remembered that he would presently, in his capacity as the railway company's representative, have the privilege of offering lunch to other detectives at the company's expense; the boy carman, positively scowling with importance, and slightly annoyed at not having been allowed an encore for his evidence, and thus giving it all over again; the railway porter, half in uniform and half in mufti, who had furnished the low-comedy element, and still repeated from mere force of habit the statements he had made from the small pulpit there to the left of the judge ('He comes to me, and he takes me off me guard by saying, "Ullo, Jimmy, old sort, are my goods up yet?" Whereupon I turns round, and I says'); the foreign witnesses imported hastily from Switzerland, including an old, old man in a black velvet jacket from Le Fleurier, who had formally identified certain of the watches ('Je les ai fabriquées, monseigneur, moi et mes hommes'); the burly packer from Basle who had placed them in the cases, and identified the cases; the consignee in London (who was the young carman's master, and at the end of whose evidence the young carman offered applause, thereby rendering himself liable to expulsion from the court, but insuring safe continuance in his situation); the waxed-moustached interpreter, who had informed his lordship when the Swiss witnesses had answered questions affirmatively that oui meant 'yes,' and that in the opposite case non might be taken as equivalent of 'no,' doing it all with the air of a sage diplomatist who knew secrets denied to other men. Dowton held the samples of watches; one of his colleagues nursed the set of furs which Alfred had intended for Caroline. She would never wear furs now.
There was a general scent of new clothes in the place; it seemed as though everybody had put on their best in honour of the occasion. Miss Ladd down in the triangle of people wore a new hat, but Miss Ladd spoilt her appearance by weeping silently. Now, Miss Ladd seldom cried.