Both branches of the legal profession were numerously represented. All of the victim's judicial colleagues were out of town, and though some of them intended as a mark of respect for the dead man to come up for the funeral, which was to take place two days later, they were too familiar with legal procedure to feel curiosity as to the working of the machinery at a preliminary inquiry into the crime. They were emphatic among their friends on the degeneracy of these days which rendered possible such an outrageous crime as the murder of a High Court judge. The fact that it was without precedent in the history of British law added to its enormity in the eyes of gentlemen who had been trained to worship precedent as the only safe guide through the shifting quicksands of life. They were insistent on the urgency of the murderer being arrested and handed over to Justice in the person of the hangman, for--as each asked himself--where was this sort of crime to end? In spite of the degeneracy of the times they were reluctant to believe in such a far-fetched supposition as the existence of a band of criminals who, in revenge for the judicial sentences imposed on members of their class, had sworn to exterminate the whole of His Majesty's judges; but, until the murderer was apprehended and the reason for the crime was discovered, it was impossible to say that the English judicature would not soon be called upon to supply other victims to criminal violence. The murder of a judge seemed to them a particularly atrocious crime, in the punishment of which the law might honourably sacrifice temporarily its well-earned reputation for delay. The bar was represented chiefly by junior members. The senior members were able to make full use of the long vacation, spending it at health resorts or in the country, but the incomes of the young shoots of the great parasitical profession did not permit them to enjoy more than a brief holiday out of town. Of course it would never have done for them to admit even to each other that they could not afford to go away for an extended holiday, and therefore they told one another in bored tones that they had not been able to make up their minds where to go. The junior bar included old men, who, through lack of influence, want of energy, want of advertisement, want of ability, or some other deficiency, had never earned more than a few guineas at their profession, though they had spent year after year in chambers. They lived on scanty private means. Broken in spirit they had even ceased to attend the courts in order to study the methods and learn the tricks of successful counsel. But the murder of a High Court judge was a thing which stirred even their sluggish blood, and in the hope of some sensational development they had put on faded silk hats and shabby black suits and gone out to Hampstead to attend the inquest.