THE STOCKS.


In the end they came to a compromise. That Dame Justice should be
hustled in this fashion--taken by the shoulders, so to speak, forced to
catch up her robe and skip--offended the Chief Magistrate's sense of
propriety. It was unseemly in the last degree, he protested.
Nevertheless it appeared certain that Captain Vyell had a right to be
tried and punished; and the Clerk's threat to set down the hearing for
an adjourned sessions was promptly countered by the culprit's producing
His Majesty's Commission, which enjoined upon all and sundry "_to
observe the welfare of my faithful subject, Oliver John Dinham de Courcy
Vyell, now travelling on the business of this my Realm, and to further
that business with all zeal and expedition as required by him_"--a
command which might be all the more strictly construed for being loosely
worded. To be sure the Court might by dilatory process linger out the
hearing of the Weights and Measures cases--one of which was being
scandalously interrupted at this moment--or it might adjourn for dinner
and reassemble in the afternoon, by which time the sands of Ruth
Josselin's five hours' ignominy would be running out. But here Mr.
Somershall had to be reckoned with. Mr. Somershall not only made it a
practice to sit long at dinner and sleep after it; he invariably lost
his temper if the dinner-hour were delayed; and, being deaf as well as
honest, he was capable of blurting out his mind in a fashion to confound
either of these disingenuous courses. As for Mr. Wapshott, the wording
of the Commission had frightened him, and he wished himself at home.

It was Mr. Trask who found the way out. Mr. Trask, his malevolent eye
fixed on the Collector, opined that after all an hour or two in the
stocks would be a salutary lesson for hot blood and pampered flesh.