Then the Clerk of Arraigns called out "Silence!" and in a solemn voice, Master Polydore said, "Endymion Leer and Clementina Gibberty, hold up your hands." They did so. Whereupon, Master Polydore read the indictment, as follows: "Endymion Leer, and Clementina Gibberty, you are accused of having poisoned the late Jeremiah Gibberty, farmer, and law-man of the district of Swan-on-the-Dapple, thirty-six years ago, with a fruit known as the berries of merciful death." Then the plaintiff, a fresh-faced young girl (none other, of course, than our old friend, Hazel) knelt at the foot of the dais and was given the great seal to kiss; upon which the Clerk of Arraigns led her up into a sort of carved pulpit, whence in a voice, low, but so clear as to penetrate to the furthest corners of the hall she told, with admirable lucidity, the story of the murder of her grandfather. Next, Mistress Ivy, flustered and timid, told the Judges, in somewhat rambling fashion, what she had already told Master Nathaniel. Then came the testimony of Peter Pease and Marjory Beach, and, finally, the document of the late farmer was handed round among the Judges. "Endymion Leer!" called out Master Polydore, "the Law bids you speak, or be silent, as your conscience prompts you." And as Endymion Leer rose to make his defence, the silence of the hall seemed to be trebled in intensity. "My Lords Judges!" he began, "I take my stand, not high enough, perhaps, to be out of reach of the gibbet, but well above the heads, I fancy, of everybody here today. And, first of all, I would have you bear in mind that my life has been spent in the service of Dorimare." (Here there was a disturbance at the back of the hall and shouts of "Down with the Senators!" "Long live the good Doctor!" But the would-be rioters were cowed by the thunder of the Law, rumbling in the "Silence!" of the Clerk of Arraigns.) "I have healed and preserved your bodies--I have tried to do the same for your souls. First, by writing a book--published anonymously some years ago--in which I tried to show the strange seeds that are sleeping in each of you. But the book hardly aroused the enthusiasm that it so justly deserved" (and he gave his old dry chuckle). "In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, the copies were burned by the common hangman--and could you have found the author you would gladly have burned him too. I can tell you since writing it I have gone in fear of my life, and have hardly dared to look a red-haired man in the face--still less a blue cow!" and here some of his partizans at the back of the hall laughed uproariously. He paused, and then went on in a graver voice, "Why have I taken all this trouble with you? Why have I spent my erudition and my skill on you thus? To speak truth, I hardly know myself ... perhaps because I like playing with fire; perhaps because I am relentlessly compassionate.