The prisoner looked rapidly from counsel to magistrate, and back again, saying, in a low voice, "Oh, no! not that! Oh, no! not that! not that!" The recorder dropped his eyes upon a paper on the desk before him, and, beginning to write, said without looking up:-- "Parish Prison--to be examined for insanity." A cry of remonstrance broke so sharply from the prisoner that even the reporters in their corner checked their energetic streams of lead-pencil rhetoric and looked up. "You cannot do that!" he exclaimed. "I am not insane! I'm not even confused now! It was only for a minute! I'm not even confused!" An officer of the court laid his hand quickly and sternly upon his arm; but the recorder leaned forward and motioned him off. The prisoner darted a single flash of anger at the officer, and then met the eye of the justice. "If I am a vagrant commit me for vagrancy! I expect no mercy here! I expect no justice! You punish me first, and try me afterward, and now you can punish me again; but you can't do that!" "Order in court! Sit down in those benches!" cried the deputies. The lawyers nodded darkly or blandly, each to each. The one who had volunteered his counsel wiped his bald Gothic brow. On the recorder's lips an austere satire played as he said to the panting prisoner:-- "You are showing not only your sanity, but your contempt of court also." The prisoner's eyes shot back a fierce light as he retorted:-- "I have no object in concealing either." The recorder answered with a quick, angry look; but, instantly restraining himself, dropped his glance upon his desk as before, began again to write, and said, with his eyes following his pen:-- "Parish Prison, for thirty days." The officer grasped the prisoner again and pointed him to the door in the palings whence he had come, and whither he now returned, without a word or note of distress. Half an hour later the dark omnibus without windows, that went by the facetious name of the "Black Maria" received the convicted ones from the same street door by which they had been brought in out of the world the night before. The waifs and vagabonds of the town gleefully formed a line across the sidewalk from the station-house to the van, and counted with zest the abundant number of passengers that were ushered into it one by one. Heigh ho! In they went: all ages and sorts; both sexes; tried and untried, drunk and sober, new faces and old acquaintances; a man who had been counterfeiting, his wife who had been helping him, and their little girl of twelve, who had done nothing. Ho, ho! Bridget Fury! Ha, ha! Howling Lou! In they go: the passive, the violent, all kinds; filling the two benches against the sides, and then the standing room; crowding and packing, until the officer can shut the door only by throwing his weight against it.