“O, if you can persuade any body to appear with you, I have no idea that the court will make any objection.” “Will you please to stop a moment, sir? Is it the same court that my brother was to have appeared in, or some other?” “Bless me, what an idea! You do not take me for a servant of the police magistrates, I suppose? It was before two police magistrates that your brother was to have gone; and I summon you before the Excise Court of Summary Jurisdiction. There is all the difference in the world.” It might be so; but to Anna’s ringing ears and bewildered comprehension they were much alike. Studley applied himself to explain. The police magistrates were, according to him, far less awful personages, inasmuch as they tried all sorts of people for all sorts of offences; while the Commissioners deputed from the Excise Board to sit as judges in the Court of Summary Jurisdiction concerned themselves in nothing but excise offences or complaints. They had a vast deal of business to do, and sat twice a week for nine months in the year. “Then I think,” observed Mrs. Le Brocq, “there must be more breaking of the excise laws than of any other kind of law.” “There is a great deal of that sort of thing. Miss Le Brocq will find herself by no means solitary. The court settled eleven hundred cases last year, do you know?” “Well, if I were the king,” said the mother, “I had rather go without some of my money than have eleven hundred of my subjects brought into one court in one year, for not paying me properly, through mistake or otherwise.” When Anna could think, she remembered her former determination to ask Mrs. Durell to go with her before the court. She lost no time in proceeding to her house to make the request. “Sit still, Stephen,” said she mournfully, when she saw that Stephen was trying to shift out of sight, as was his wont when any of her family were known to be near. “Sit still, and put away your meek look before me. You have nothing to fear from any of us, even if I held proof in this right hand that you had done what we thought you did. We are ruined now. We have no heart to defend ourselves, or to try to punish our enemies.” “Pooh, pooh! this is all about the tea. They have been troubling you about the tea,” said good Mrs. Durell; “and so you can see nothing but what is dismal this afternoon.” “Indeed, Mrs. Durell, it is too true,” replied Anna, struggling with her tears. “I just came to ask you to go with me to-morrow morning—to be at the court by eleven o’clock.” “I have no objection in the world, my dear, but this. It might not be thought well for the surveyor’s wife to be with you, perhaps. It might give occasion for something being said. Is there no other friend who might do you more service?” Anna had no other friend. She could not think of taking her mother into a place so strange to her, and to see such a sight.