Next day these two were brought up in the Magistrate's Court, which was presided over by his Worship the Colonel of the "Nunnery," a worthy and dignified man, to whom the turn of recent events was shocking. The old Court-house was crowded with the excited townspeople, and as many of the Clubmen were present as dare show their bandaged heads out of their bedrooms. When the case was called, and the two defendants entered the dock, they made a grotesque and rather pitiful contrast--Gell in his tall, slim, fair-haired gentlemanliness, and Fanny in her warm fat comeliness, decked out in some gaudy finery which she had sent home for, having been carried off in the night with streaming locks and naked bosom. In the place of the Attorney-General, the prosecutor was a full-bodied, elderly advocate named Hudgeon, who had been the subject of one of the most withering of the lampoons. He opened with bitter severity, spoke of the case as the worst of the kind the island had known; referred to the "most unholy hour of the morning" which had lately been selected for scenes of unseemly riot; said his "righteous indignation" was roused at such disgraceful doings, and finally hoped the Court would, for the credit of lawyers "hereafter" make an example, "without respect of persons," of the representative of a group of young roysterers, who were a disgrace to the law, and had nothing better to do (so rumour and report were saying) than to traduce the good names of their elders and betters. When he had examined the constables and closed his case it looked as if Gell were in danger of Castle Rushen, and the consequent wrecking of his career at the Bar, and that nothing was before Fanny but banishment from the island, with such solace as the bribe of her employers might bring her. But then, to a rustle of whispering, Stowell, who was in wig and gown for the first time, got up for the defence. It had been expected that he would do so, and many old advocates who had heard much of him, had left their offices, and filled the advocates' box, to see for themselves what mettle he was made of. They had not long to wait. In five minutes he had made such play with his "learned friend's" "unholy hour of the morning," "his righteous indignation" and his "hereafter" for lawyers (not without reference to a traditional personage with horns and a fork) that the merriment of the people in Court rose from a titter to a roar, which the ushers were powerless to suppress. Again and again the writhing prosecutor, with flaming face and foaming and spluttering mouth, appealed in vain to the Bench, until at length, getting no protection, and being lashed by a wit more cutting than a whip, he gathered up his papers and, leaving the case to his clerk, fled from the Court like an infuriated bat, saying he would never again set foot in it.