A more emphatic protest was entered at this point by the counsel for the Crown. It was upheld by the judge with an equal access of emphasis. Northcote accepted the ruling with the nicely poised urbanity with which he had received the previous one; yet in the act of doing so he contrived, as if by an accident, to let his gaunt eyes alight on the jury. It was followed by a smile which crept over his haggard cheeks; and this was conveyed to each of them personally, as though he were covering a retreat with a little apology. Yet it was all contrived so delicately that it required a certain fineness of perception to notice it. During the next few minutes these objections were frequent. They were raised with an ever-increasing vehemence by the counsel for the Crown, were embodied with an ever-increasing acerbity and sternness by the judge, and were received by the counsel for the defence with a deferential patience, the ironical side of which was immediately exposed by the next question he put to the witness, and also by the concentrated manner in which he smiled at the jury. After a perfect rain of objections, which for the purposes of our narrative must henceforward be taken as granted, the leader for the Crown could stand the carefully elaborated audacity of this unknown tyro no longer. He lost his temper. “Mr.--er--er,” he said, referring to a paper for the name, “Mr. Thornton, you have no need to keep smiling at the jury in that way.” Northcote turned to face his adversary with a deliberation that astonished the bar, and even caused a grim flicker to play about the mouth of the judge. “I trust, Mr. Weekes,” he said, “you will withdraw your objection to these amenities. If you do not, I feel sure his lordship will be bound to uphold it. And if, Mr. Weekes, I might urge you to be patient, I can promise that your time to receive them will arrive.” The measured dryness of the young man’s manner set the bar in a twitter. “Damn his young eyes,” said a barrister of elephantine proportions on the back bench to a colleague; “two birds with one stone. I shall stand him a bottle. I like his mug.” The opinion of the ex-president of the Oxford Union was less favorable. “Funny chap, isn’t he?” drawled the product of Eton and Christchurch. “What can he do for the case by trying to score off the judge and a silk gown?” “Theoretically he’s wrong,” said the son of the Master of the Rolls; “but it was very nicely done. I am sure my guv’nor would have liked it.”