The justice looked at him, baffled. There were few persons present, and most of them the miniature strikers. But he discerned in the countenances of the officers and a lawyer or two, besides those representing the prosecutors, an alert appreciation of his departure from the methods of his office and the letter of the law. "Come, come, now,--what were they doing?" Ned looked down at his convulsively working hands and said nothing,--knowing not what to say and what to leave unsaid. "What o'clock was it when you left?" The magistrate essayed as he supposed an easy inquiry. He wished not to have it said that with an unprecedented course of questioning he had reduced the prisoner to silence when the law expressly provides what shall be asked of him, and that with his consent, by the examining magistrate. He could not conceive that the interrogation as to the hour when one quitted a theatre could prove an embarrassment. It failed, however, to reopen verbal communication. Ned heard again far away that tolling bell of the night strike the mystic note of one o'clock, the single weighty tone, impressive, awe-inspiring, with the recollection of the darkness and the strangeness of his awakening. Once more he said nothing. The justice at last desisted in irritation. He had not acquitted himself to his satisfaction, and he began to be more acutely ill at ease as he noted two or three newspaper reporters in the room, who had been attracted by the rumor of unusual circumstances in the examination which had already gotten wind. One of the reporters suddenly addressed the magistrate, and to Ned's surprise and his deep mortification he recognized a representative of the paper which he also served in his humble capacity. "May it please your honor," said the reporter courteously, "I know the defendant very well, and can testify to his general good character." The justice, thoroughly out of temper, replied testily, "To please me you would have to testify to a good deal more than that." "I thought from your manner that you would be glad to be able to avoid committing so young a lad." The reporter sought to justify himself. Now this comment upon the course which the justice had seen fit to take, since he himself did not altogether approve it, was the most unfortunate that could have been made in Ned's interest. That it was disapproved by the detective, the officers, and the lawyers of the parties who were grievous sufferers by the crime in which Ned had contrived to become entangled and who naturally, from the magnitude of the losses, were not disposed to leniency, was most obvious from their general facial expression, although no overt indication of dissatisfaction had been adventured.