"And now, my Lords Judges, I will forestall your sentence. I have pleaded guilty, and you will send me for a ride on what the common people call Duke Aubrey's wooden horse; and you will think that you are sending me there because I helped to murder the farmer Gibberty. But, my Lords Judges, you are purblind, and, even in spectacles, you can only read a big coarse script. It is not you that are punishing me, but others for a spiritual sin. During these days of my imprisonment I have pondered much on my own life, and I have come to see that I have sinned. But how? I have prided myself on being a good chemist, and in my crucibles I can make the most subtle sauces yield up their secret--whether it be white arsenic, rosalgar, mercury sublimate, or cantharides. But where is the crucible or the chemist that can analyse a spiritual sin? "But I have not lived in vain. You will send me to ride on Duke Aubrey's wooden horse, and, in time, the double-faced Doctor will be forgotten; and so will you, my Lords Judges. But Lud-in-the-Mist will stand, and the country of Dorimare, and the dreaded country beyond the hills. And the trees will continue to suck life from the earth and the clouds, and the winds will howl o' nights, and men will dream dreams. And who knows? Some day, perhaps, my fickle bitter-sweet master, the lord of life and death, of laughter and tears, will come dancing at the head of his silent battalions to make wild music in Dorimare. "This then, my Lords Judges, is my defence," and he gave a little bow towards the dais. While he had been speaking, the Judges had shown increasing symptoms of irritation and impatience. This was not the language of the Law. As for the public--it was divided. One part had sat taut with attention--lips slightly parted, eyes dreamy, as if they were listening to music. But the majority--even though many of them were partisans of the Doctor--felt that they were being cheated. They had expected that their hero, whether guilty or not, would in his defence quite bamboozle the Judges by his juggling with the evidence and brilliant casuistry. Instead of which his speech had been obscure, and, they dimly felt, indecent; so the girls tittered, and the young men screwed their mouths into those grimaces which are the comment of the vulgar on anything they consider both ridiculous and obscene. "Terribly bad taste, I call it," whispered Dame Dreamsweet to Dame Marigold (the sisters-in-law had agreed to bury the hatchet) "you always said that little man was a low vulgar fellow." But Dame Marigold's only answer was a little shrug, and a tiny sigh. Then came the turn of the widow Gibberty to mount the pulpit and make her defence.