Scattered through the various compartments of its three short coaches sat all the witnesses of George’s condemnation. The jury, having no alternative, had found him guilty of manslaughter, and the judge, who saw in front of him a programme of cases more important than this flicker of violence in a remote agricultural district, wasted no time on his sentence. If Bastard had not been a policeman, and therefore a humble symbol of the code which his lordship administered, if the witness Badger had not been a gamekeeper, which was much the same thing, George might easily have escaped with a few months’ imprisonment, or half a year’s at most. The barrister whom Mrs Malpas had employed for the defence realised this. The fact that he was most eager to establish seemed to be that George was not, and had never been, a poacher, and that he was not on bad terms with the man he had killed. Mrs Malpas, sitting in the public gallery on the bench in front of Mary, listened eagerly. Her heart sank as she listened to the evidence, the words that she had heard before in the police-court at Lesswardine, for she had expected that the little man in the gray wig who had shaken hands with her an hour before in consideration of the thirty pounds that she had scraped together to pay him, would throw some new and startling light upon the case, reducing Badger to tears and confounding the Lesswardine police. She had expected thunders and passionate appeals to the mercy of the jury. Instead of this he spoke in a low voice, with a Jewish lisp, and even cracked a joke, at which the jury smiled, with one of the witnesses for the prosecution. The old woman felt that she had been betrayed. Seeking ideal justice she had found something trivial and cynical. The whole business was nearly over before she realised that it had begun. The judge summed up lazily, only pitching his voice when he dwelt upon the necessity of such men as Bastard to the public safety and the very existence of property. The jury retired for less than two minutes. The judge gave sentence of eighteen months’ hard labour, and the white face of George, who had stood like a statue throughout the trial, disappeared from the dock. When she looked again she saw that another man, who looked like a tramp, had entered it. People around her began to talk, for this was a case of real murder, and this mean-looking creature was to fight for his life. Only then did the old woman realise that George’s case was over. She passed Mary in the door of the gallery and hurried downstairs, where the counsel whom she had briefed congratulated her on the issue of the case. While she was engaged with him and with Harley, the solicitor, Mary passed her and joined Abner on the steps of the court. Mrs Malpas, in the middle of her conversation, gave them a queer sidelong glance that filled Mary with uneasiness. ‘I don’t think we had better go home together,’ she whispered.