“Ay, many of those gentry are up to that. Is it not surprising, Timms, that in a country for ever boasting of its freedom, men do not see how much abuse there is of a very important interest, in suffering these irresponsible tyrants to ride rough-shod over the community?” “Lord, ’Squire, it is not with the reporters only, that abuses are to be found. I was present, the other day, at a conversation between a judge and a great town lawyer, when the last deplored the state of the juries! ‘What would you have?’ says his Honour; ‘angels sent down from Heaven to fill the jury-boxes?’ Waal”—Timms never could get over the defects of his early associations—“Waal, ’Squire,” he continued, with a shrewd leer of the eyes, “I thought a few saints might be squeezed in between the lowest angel in Heaven and the average of our Duke’s county pannels. This is a great fashion of talking that is growing up among us to meet an objection by crying out, ‘men are not angels;’ as if some men are not better than others.” “The institutions clearly maintain that some men are better than others, Timms!” “That’s news to me, I will own. I thought the institutions declared all men alike—that is, all white men; I know that the niggers are non-suited.” “They are unsuited, at least, according to the spirit of the institutions. If all men are supposed to be alike, what use is there in the elections? Why not draw lots for office, as we draw lots for juries? Choice infers inequalities, or the practice is an absurdity. But here comes McBrain, with a face so full of meaning, he must have something to tell us.” Sure enough, the bridegroom-physician came into the room at that instant; and without circumlocution he entered at once on the topic that was then uppermost in his mind. It was the custom of the neighbourhood to profit by the visits of this able practitioner to his country place, by calling on him for advice in such difficult cases as existed anywhere in the vicinity of Timbully. Even his recent marriage did not entirely protect him from these appeals, which brought so little pecuniary advantage as to be gratuitous; and he had passed much of the last two days in making professional visits in a circle around his residence that included Biberry. Such were the means by which he had obtained the information that now escaped from him, as it might be, involuntarily. “I have never known so excited a state of the public mind,” he cried, “as now exists all around Biberry, on the subject of your client, Tom, and this approaching trial. Go where I may, see whom I will, let the disease be as serious as possible, all, patients, parents, friends and nurses, commence business with asking me what I think of Mary Monson, and of her guilt or innocence.”