"Well, it's a poor hert that never rejoices!" he would say, at the
conclusion of such a nightmare interview. "But I must get to my plew-
stilts." And he would seclude himself as usual in his back room, and
Archie go forth into the night and the city quivering with animosity and
scorn.
CHAPTER III - IN THE MATTER OF THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP
IT chanced in the year 1813 that Archie strayed one day into the
Justiciary Court. The macer made room for the son of the presiding
judge. In the dock, the centre of men's eyes, there stood a whey-
coloured, misbegotten caitiff, Duncan Jopp, on trial for his life. His
story, as it was raked out before him in that public scene, was one of
disgrace and vice and cowardice, the very nakedness of crime; and the
creature heard and it seemed at times as though he understood - as if at
times he forgot the horror of the place he stood in, and remembered the
shame of what had brought him there. He kept his head bowed and his
hands clutched upon the rail; his hair dropped in his eyes and at times
he flung it back; and now he glanced about the audience in a sudden
fellness of terror, and now looked in the face of his judge and gulped.
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