‘I will never tell,’ said Johnnie, upon which Betty gave him a kiss and called him ‘a poor darlin’, as knew nothing,’ and knocked at the door before which they were standing, and took him up a long, long narrow stair. Johnnie saw nothing of any importance when he was taken into a little ordinary room at the top, where two women were sitting beside a little fire, where a kettle was boiling and the table set all ready for tea. ‘This is the poor little boy,’ Betty said, after a while: and both the women looked at him, and patted him on the head, and said, ‘Poor little gentleman,’ and that he must have his tea first. He did not mind having his tea, for he was tired with his walk, and the bread and butter they gave him was sprinkled thinly over with little sweetmeats, very little tiny things, red and white, which were quite new to Johnnie. He was used to jam and honey and other things of this kind, but to eat bread and butter sprinkled with sugar-plums was quite a novelty. While he was busy in this agreeable way, one of the women put out the candles and drew up the blind from the window. And then Johnnie saw the wonderful thing which he was never to forget all his life. Out of the little dark room there was a view into a great hall, lighted up and crammed full of people all sitting round and round in endless lines. Even in church he had never seen so many people together before. Some were seated in red dresses quite high up where everybody could see them, but the others were quite like people at church. It was very strange to see all that assembly, busy about something, sitting in rows and looking at each other, and not a word to be heard. Johnnie gazed and eat his bread and butter with the sugar-plums, and was not quite sure which was the most wonderful. ‘What are they doing?’ he asked Betty. But Betty only put her arms round him and began to sob and cry. ‘Oh, bless the child, Lord bless the child! Oh listen to him, the little innocent.’ He did not like to be held to Betty’s breast, nor to be wept over in that unpleasant way. He shook himself free, and said to the other women, ‘Will you tell me? What are they doing all staring at each other.’ ‘It’s a trial, my poor dear little gentleman. They are trying a man for his life.’ ‘No, no, not for his life: though it would have been for his life a little time ago,’ said the other. Johnnie did not know what it meant to try a man for his life; but he accepted the description, as a child often does, without further inquiry, and stood and looked at it wondering. But it did not seem to him the extraordinary thing that Betty had said it was, and presently he began to pull at her skirts, and asked to go home.