“At first I could make no answer. I was stupefied by the thought my too active imagination had conjured up. And then at last I said to myself, ‘I shall ask for guidance in this matter; I shall ask for guidance from that tribunal which lies within my own nature.’ And, my friends, there and then I turned to it, as though this thing had come of a verity to pass, for the sight of you all seated there in your despair had borne upon me so heavily that your situation had become my own. “Now the answer that tribunal vouchsafed to me was this: ‘Consider what your pastors and masters would do were they placed in your case. Consider what would be the attitude of those great minds that still burn like candles in the night of the time, whose radiance has warmed your veins, whose immortality has enriched your own personal nature. Consider what would be the conduct of those representative spirits of whom you proud Englishmen of the twentieth century are the heirs.’ “And then a strange thing happened. No sooner had this answer been written on the tablets of my brain, than this gaslit room grew dimmer than it already was, and there seemed to arise a kind of commotion among you gentlemen of the jury. And when at last I found the courage to lift my eyes outwards from my thoughts, and they looked towards you, I saw with a thrill of surprise, as if by the agency of magic, that each one of your faces had been blotted out. Each was shrouded in an intense darkness. But while I continued to gaze upon the place that had contained you, almost with a feeling of horror, a shadowy haze seemed to play over it, and a number of strange faces peopled the gloom. They were more than twelve in number; they were more than twenty; they were more than a hundred. For the most part they were those of men old and austere. Each face seemed to be that of a person of infinite power and dominion, of one accustomed to walk alone. Each was marked by a kind of superhuman composure, as though having spent its youth in every phase of stress, it had emerged at last upon the summits of the mountains, where the air is rarefied, and where it is possible to hold a personal intercourse with Truth. Some of the faces were grave, some a little sinister, but the eyes of each had a forward, upward look which conferred an expression upon them of entrancing beauty. “Stealthily, rapidly, but with a superhuman composure these noble shadows ranged themselves in the jury-box, in the room of you gentlemen who had vacated it. And when I had overcome my stupefaction sufficiently to look upon these new jurors more closely, I was struck with amazement at the curious familiarity of those faces of theirs. They were those of persons that I had seemed to have known all my life.