Thus, as the days went by, at Raylesbury and the succeeding Assize towns, drama after drama was unfolded, and varieties of character revealed--knaves guileless and knaves quickwitted; fools without balance or self-restraint; mere animals--or such they seemed--doing animal deeds and confronted with a human standard to which they were not equal and which they regarded with a dull dismay. Incidentally there came to light ways of life and modes of thought astonishing, yet plainly accepted and related as things normal; the old hands on the circuit knew all about them and used their knowledge deftly in cross-examination. Now and then the dock was filled by a figure that seemed strange to it, by a denizen of the same world that Bench and Bar, High Sheriff and Marshal inhabited; in one place there was a solicitor who had been town-clerk and embezzled public moneys; in another a local magistrate stood to plead in the dock side by side with a labourer whom he himself had committed for trial; the labourer was acquitted, and the magistrate sent to prison--with nought to seek thence-forward but oblivion. Freaks of destiny and whirligigs of fortune! Yet these were the exception. The salient revelation was of a great world of people to whom there was nothing strange in finding themselves, their relatives or friends, in that dock, to whom it was an accident that might well happen to anybody, an incident in many a career. But they expected the game to be played; they were keen on that, and bitterly resented any sharp practice by the police; a "fair cop," on the other hand, begat no resentment. Lack of consideration as between man and man, however, stirred ire. One fellow's great grievance was that a zealous officer had arrested him at seven o'clock on a Sunday morning. "Why couldn't 'e let me 'ave my Sunday sleep out?" he demanded. "A bloke's not going to do a bunk at seven on a Sunday morning!" His lordship smilingly assured him that he should have seven days less in prison, but he was not appeased. "Seven of a Sunday, my lordship!" he growled still, in disappearing. "Well, I shouldn't like it myself," said "my lordship" aside to the Marshal.