"The boy Nicholas is to be tried to-
day!" has rung through the city: curious lookers-on begin to
assemble round the squire's office, and Hanz Von Vickeinsteighner is
in great good humour at the prospect of a profitable day at his
counter.
"Bring the criminal in!" says Squire Fetter, turning into his office
as Nicholas is led in,--still bearing the marks of rough usage. Rows
of board seats stretch across the little nook, which is about
sixteen feet wide by twenty long, the floor seeming on the verge of
giving way under its professional burden. The plaster hangs in
broken flakes from the walls, which are exceedingly dingy, and
decorated with festoons of melancholy cobwebs. At the farther end is
an antique book-case of pine slats, on which are promiscuously
thrown sundry venerable-looking works on law, papers, writs,
specimens of minerals, branches of coral, aligators' teeth, several
ship's blocks, and a bit of damaged fishing-tackle. This is Felsh's
repository of antique collections; what many of them have to do with
his rough pursuit of the learned profession we leave to the reader's
discrimination. It has been intimated by several waggishly-inclined
gentlemen, that a valuable record of all the disobedient "niggers"
Fetter had condemned to be hung might be found among this confused
collection of antiquities. A deal table, covered with a varnished
cloth, standing on the right side of the room, and beside which a
ponderous arm-chair is raised a few inches, forms Fetter's tribune.
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