Z9 spoke with the proud consciousness of one who can respond to an intellectual pleasure. X012, with a mental organization of less delicacy, although impressed by so rare a personality, yet retained the reverence for facts of the honest Englishman. “He’ve a gift right enough, Bill,” said X012 magisterially, “but the law is the law to my mind; and black’s black an’ white’s white. If this woman done the crime--I don’t say she did, mind--the law will ’ang her. An’ rightly, too. This gentleman is a book-learned man and a horator,--I know that because I heard Gladstone on Blackheath,--but the law is the law and horatory ain’t a-going to alter it.” “I am obliged to you both for your courtesy,” said Northcote, with a perfect gravity, “and my obligation is even the deeper for the opinions you have been good enough to express. You are prototypes of the twelve honest men I am going to sway; and I take it that if my address were to be launched in its present immature shape, you, sir, would record your vote for an acquittal, and you, sir, for the severity of the law?” “The law is the law I say,” said X012, inflating his chest before the honor of this direct canvass of his intelligence, “an’ words is words, although, mind you, sir, I respec’s you, because I heard Gladstone on Blackheath.” “I assume,” said Northcote, “that although you admired Gladstone’s oratory, you did not allow it to influence your judgment?” “That’s ’is pig-headedness, sir,” said Z9. “That’s just like a Tory; great horators can talk till all’s blue, and then they can’t get daylight into a Tory. ‘The law is the law,’ says he; an’ if it come to, he’d hang his own fayther.” “I take it, policeman, that you try to keep an open mind, a mind accessible to new impressions?” “That is so, sir,” said Z9. “I say with you, sir, that although the law is the law, human natur’ is human natur’. And although Bill ’Arper is just a common p’liceman with on’y one stripe, an’ not a lawyer like you, sir, nor a beak, nor a judge, ’e never goes into court and a-takes off ’is ’elmet but what ’e feels ’igh-minded.” “Then, policeman, regarding you in the light of a juryman, it is most probable that you would want mercy to be extended to the prisoner, in spite of the law, if you happened to be in your present frame of mind?” “Yes, sir, I should in my present frame o’ mind.” “More shame to you, Bill,” said X012; “you are a nice bloke to be a copper, an’ no mistake.” “Close it, ’Orrice,” said Z9, with a restrained enthusiasm; “you bloomin’ Tories are so thick’eaded you don’t know nothing.” “Well, gentlemen,” interposed the advocate, brushing the water from his brief, “as I observe you to be on the brink of an altercation, I will hasten to discharge you with my best thanks for your kind attention in order that you may have it out. For the subject will engage your powers worthily; pursue it, and it will take you into strange places. But before I leave you to do so, may I ask where I am?”