The justice of the quorum closed it.

This order compelled a certain deliberation of movement.

All the majesty possible in an official shone in the justice of the

quorum. His costume held a middle place between the splendid robe of a

doctor of music of Oxford and the sober black habiliments of a doctor of

divinity of Cambridge. He wore the dress of a gentleman under a long

godebert, which is a mantle trimmed with the fur of the Norwegian

hare. He was half Gothic and half modern, wearing a wig like Lamoignon,

and sleeves like Tristan l'Hermite. His great round eye watched

Gwynplaine with the fixedness of an owl's.

He walked with a cadence. Never did honest man look fiercer.

Ursus, for a moment thrown out of his way in the tangled skein of

streets, overtook, close to Saint Mary Overy, the cortège, which had

fortunately been retarded in the churchyard by a fight between children

and dogs--a common incident in the streets in those days. "Dogs and

boys," say the old registers of police, placing the dogs before the

boys.

A man being taken before a magistrate by the police was, after all, an

everyday affair, and each one having his own business to attend to, the

few who had followed soon dispersed. There remained but Ursus on the

track of Gwynplaine.

585

The Man Who Laughs