Standing on a seat at the side of the hall, the better to peer into the curtained sanctuary, is a little mad old woman in a squeezed bonnet who is always in court, from its sitting to its rising, and always expecting some incomprehensible judgment to be given in her favour.

Some say she really is, or was, a party to a suit, but no one knows for certain because no one cares.

She carries some small litter in a reticule which she calls her documents, principally consisting of paper matches and dry lavender.

A sallow prisoner has come up, in custody, for the half-dozenth time to make a personal application "to purge himself of his contempt," which, being a solitary surviving executor who has fallen into a state of conglomeration about accounts of which it is not pretended that he had ever any knowledge, he is not at all likely ever to do.

In the meantime his prospects in life are ended.