Chapter 28

The next morning Henchard went to the Town Hall below
Lucetta's house, to attend Petty Sessions, being still a
magistrate for the year by virtue of his late position as
Mayor. In passing he looked up at her windows, but nothing
of her was to be seen.

Henchard as a Justice of the Peace may at first seem to be
an even greater incongruity than Shallow and Silence
themselves. But his rough and ready perceptions, his
sledge-hammer directness, had often served him better than
nice legal knowledge in despatching such simple business as
fell to his hands in this Court. To-day Dr. Chalkfield, the
Mayor for the year, being absent, the corn-merchant took the
big chair, his eyes still abstractedly stretching out of the
window to the ashlar front of High-Place Hall.

There was one case only, and the offender stood before him.
She was an old woman of mottled countenance, attired in a
shawl of that nameless tertiary hue which comes, but cannot
be made--a hue neither tawny, russet, hazel, nor ash; a
sticky black bonnet that seemed to have been worn in the
country of the Psalmist where the clouds drop fatness; and
an apron that had been white in time so comparatively recent
as still to contrast visibly with the rest of her clothes.
The steeped aspect of the woman as a whole showed her to be
no native of the country-side or even of a country-town.

She looked cursorily at Henchard and the second magistrate,
and Henchard looked at her, with a momentary pause, as if
she had reminded him indistinctly of somebody or something
which passed from his mind as quickly as it had come.
"Well, and what has she been doing?" he said, looking down
at the charge sheet.

"She is charged, sir, with the offence of disorderly female
and nuisance," whispered Stubberd.

"Where did she do that?" said the other magistrate.

"By the church, sir, of all the horrible places in the
world!--I caught her in the act, your worship."

"Stand back then," said Henchard, "and let's hear what
you've got to say."

Stubberd was sworn in, the magistrate's clerk dipped his
pen, Henchard being no note-taker himself, and the constable
began--

"Hearing a' illegal noise I went down the street at twenty-
five minutes past eleven P.M. on the night of the fifth
instinct, Hannah Dominy. When I had--

"Don't go so fast, Stubberd," said the clerk.

The constable waited, with his eyes on the clerk's pen, till
the latter stopped scratching and said, "yes." Stubberd
continued: "When I had proceeded to the spot I saw defendant
at another spot, namely, the gutter." He paused, watching
the point of the clerk's pen again.

"Gutter, yes, Stubberd."

"Spot measuring twelve