The bench, with the judge at their head, had followed her example, and stood staring with all their might, looking, truth to tell, as much startled by the sudden apparition as the fair sex.

The said fair sex were still firing off little volleys of screams in chorus, and clinging desperately to their cavaliers; and everything, in a word, was in most admired disorder.
Tam O'Shanter's cry, "Weel done, Cutty sark!" could not have produced half such a commotion among his "hellish legion" as the emphatic debut of Sir Norman Kingsley among these human revelers.

The only one who seemed rather to enjoy it than otherwise was the prisoner, who was quietly and quickly making off, when the malevolent and irrepressible dwarf espied him, and the one shock acting as a counter-irritant to the other, he bounced fleetly over the table, and grabbed him in his crab-like claws.
This brisk and laudable instance of self-command had a wonderful and inspiriting effect on the rest; and as he replaced the pale and palsied prisoner in his former position, giving him a vindictive shake and vicious kick with his royal boots as he did so, everybody began to feel themselves again.

The ladies stopped screaming, the gentlemen ceased swearing, and more than one exclamation of astonishment followed the cries of terror.
"Sir Norman Kingsley! Sir Norman Kingsley!" rang from lip to lip of those who recognized him; and all drew closer, and looked at him as if they really could not make up their mind to believe their eyes.

As for Sir Norman himself, that gentleman was destined literally, if not metaphorically, to fall on his legs that night, and had alighted on the crimson velvet-carpet, cat-like, on his feet.