Mary Gosport, afraid to march in a long dress with the child, for fear of accidents, handed him superbly to Millar and strutted haughtily after her mistress, nodding patronage. Her follower, the meek Millar, stopped often to show the heir right and left, with simple geniality and kindness. Sir Charles stood on the hall steps, and invited all to come in and take pot-luck. Already spits were turning before great fires; a rump of beef, legs of pork, and pease-puddings boiling in one copper; turkeys and fowls in another; joints and pies baking in the great brick ovens; barrels of beer on tap, and magnums of champagne and port marching steadily up from the cellars, and forming in line and square upon sideboards and tables. Supper was laid in the hall, the dining-room, the drawing-room, and the great kitchen. Poor villagers trickled in: no man or woman was denied; it was open house that night, as it had been four hundred years ago. CHAPTER XXXII. WHEN Sharpe's clerk retired, after serving that writ on Bassett, Bassett went to Wheeler and treated it as a jest. But Wheeler looked puzzled, and Bassett himself, on second thoughts, said he should like advice of counsel. Accordingly they both went up to London to a solicitor, and obtained an interview with a counsel learned in the law. He heard their story, and said, “The question is, can you convince a jury he was insane at the time?” “But he can't get into court,” said Bassett. “I won't let him.” “Oh, the court will make you produce him.” “But I thought an insane person was civiliter mortuus, and couldn't sue.” “So he is; but this man is not insane in law. Shutting up a man on certificates is merely a preliminary step to a fair trial by his peers whether he is insane or not. Take the parallel case of a felon. A magistrate commits him for trial, and generally on better evidence than medical certificates; but that does not make the man a felon, or disentitle him to a trial by his peers; on the contrary, it entitles him to a trial, and he could get Parliament to interfere if he was not brought to trial. This plaintiff simply does what, he will say, you ought to have done; he tries himself; if he tries you at the same time, that is your fault. If he is insane now, fight. If he is not, I advise you to discharge him on the instant, and then compound.” Wheeler said he was afraid the plaintiff was too vindictive to come to terms. “Well, then, you can show you discharged him the moment you had reason to think he was cured, and you must prove he was insane when you incarcerated him; but I warn you it will be uphill work if he is sane now; the jury will be apt to go by what they see.” Bassett and Wheeler retired; the latter did not presume to differ; but Bassett was dissatisfied and irritated. “That fellow would only see the plaintiff's side,” said he. “The fool forgets there is an Act of Parliament, and that we have complied with its provisions to a T.”