grocer in Shrewsbury, and now prisoner in the jail of that town?

The reader may take it, if he pleases, as a sign that Judge Harbottle
was a good Christian, that he suffered nothing ever from remorse. That
was undoubtedly true. He had, nevertheless, done this grocer, forger,
what you will, some five or six years before, a grievous wrong; but it
was not that, but a possible scandal, and possible complications, that
troubled the learned Judge now.

Did he not, as a lawyer, know, that to bring a man from his shop to the
dock, the chances must be at least ninety-nine out of a hundred that he
is guilty?

A weak man like his learned brother Withershins was not a judge to keep
the high-roads safe, and make crime tremble. Old Judge Harbottle was the
man to make the evil-disposed quiver, and to refresh the world with
showers of wicked blood, and thus save the innocent, to the refrain of
the ancient saw he loved to quote:

Foolish pity
Ruins a city.

In hanging that fellow he could not be wrong. The eye of a man
accustomed to look upon the dock could not fail to read "villain"
written sharp and clear in his plotting face. Of course he would try
him, and no one else should.

A saucy-looking woman, still handsome, in a mob-cap gay with blue
ribbons, in a saque of flowered silk, with lace and rings on, much too
fine for the Judge's housekeeper, which nevertheless she was, peeped