The woman drew the curtain.
Sunshine! A stream of it, dazzling them almost to blindness and
sending them, one and all, pellmell back upon each other! However
dismal the approach, here all was in brilliant light with every
evidence before them of busy life.
The room was not only filled, but crammed, with furniture. This
was the first thing they noticed; then, as their blinking eyes
became accustomed to the glare and to the unexpected confusion of
tables and chairs and screens and standing receptacles for books
and pamphlets and boxes labelled and padlocked, they beheld
something else; something, which once seen, held the eye from
further wandering and made the apprehensions from which they had
suffered sink into insignificance before a real and only too
present terror.
The judge was there! but in what a condition.
From the end of the forty foot room, his seated figure confronted
them, silent, staring and unmoving. With clenched fingers gripping
the arms of his great chair, and head held forward, he looked like
one frozen at the moment of doom, such the expression of features
usually so noble, and now almost unrecognisable were it not for
the snow of his locks and his unmistakable brow.
Frozen! Not an eyelash quivered, nor was there any perceptible
movement in his sturdy chest. His eyes were on their eyes, but he
saw no one; and down upon his head and over his whole form the
sunshine poured from a large window let into the ceiling directly
above him, lighting up the strained and unnatural aspect of his
remarkable countenance and bringing into sharp prominence the
commonplace objects cluttering the table at his elbow; such as his
hat and gloves, and the bundle of papers he had doubtless made
ready for court.
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