The entrance of the Judge, and a consequent great stir andsettling down in the court, stopped the dialogue. Presently, thedock became the central point of interest. Two gaolers, who had beenstanding there, went out, and the prisoner was brought in, and putto the bar.

Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman who looked at theceiling, stared at him. All the human breath in the place, rolled athim, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire. Eager faces strained roundpillars and comers, to get a sight of him; spectators in back rowsstood up, not to miss a hair of him; people on the floor of the court,laid their hands on the shoulders of the people before them, to helpthemselves, at anybody's cost, to a view of him- stood a-tiptoe, gotupon ledges,  to see every inch of him.Conspicuous among these latter, like an animated bit of the spikedwall of Newgate, Jerry stood: aiming at the prisoner the beerybreath of a whet he had taken as he came along, and discharging itto mingle with the waves of other beer, and gin, and tea, andcoffee, and what not, that flowed at him, and already broke upon thegreat windows behind him in an impure mist and rain.

The object of all this staring and blaring, was a young man of aboutfive-and-twenty, well-grown and well-looking, with a sunburnt cheekand a dark eye. His condition was that of a young gentleman. He wasplainly dressed in black, or very dark grey, and his hair, which waslong and dark, was gathered in a ribbon at the back of his neck;more to be out of his way than for ornament. As an emotion of the mindwill express itself through any covering of the body, so thepaleness which his situation engendered came through the brown uponhis cheek, showing the soul to be stronger than the sun. He wasotherwise quite self-possessed, bowed to the Judge, and stood quiet.

The sort of interest with which this man was stared and breathed at,was not a sort that elevated humanity. Had he stood in peril of a lesshorrible sentence- had there been a chance of any one of its savagedetails being spared- by just so much would he have lost in hisfascination. The form that was to be doomed to be so shamefullymangled, was the sight; the immortal creature that was to be sobutchered and torn asunder, yielded the sensation. Whatever glossthe various spectators put upon the interest, according to theirseveral arts and powers of self-deceit, the interest was, at theroot of it, Ogreish dermes hk.