The Execution

In an instant all was confusion. Everybody sprang to their feet--ladies
shrieked in chorus, gentlemen swore and drew their swords, and looked
to see if they might not expect a whole army to drop from the sky upon
them, as they stood. No other battalion, however, followed this forlorn
hope; and seeing it, the gentlemen took heart of grace and closed around
the unceremonious intruder. The queen had sprung from her royal seat,
and stood with her bright lips parted, and her brighter eyes dilating in
speechless wonder. The bench, with the judge at their head, had followed
her example, and stood staring with all their might, looking, truth to
tell, as much startled by the sudden apparition as the fair sex. The
said fair sex were still firing off little volleys of screams in chorus,
and clinging desperately to their cavaliers; and everything, in a word,
was in most admired disorder.

Tam O'Shanter's cry, "Weel done, Cutty sark!" could not have produced
half such a commotion among his "hellish legion" as the emphatic debut
of Sir Norman Kingsley among these human revelers. The only one who
seemed rather to enjoy it than otherwise was the prisoner, who was
quietly and quickly making off, when the malevolent and irrepressible
dwarf espied him, and the one shock acting as a counter-irritant to
the other, he bounced fleetly over the table, and grabbed him in his
crab-like claws.

This brisk and laudable instance of self-command had a wonderful and
inspiriting effect on the rest; and as he replaced the pale and palsied
prisoner in his former position, giving him a vindictive shake and
vicious kick with his royal boots as he did so, everybody began to feel
themselves again. The ladies stopped screaming, the gentlemen ceased
swearing, and more than one exclamation of astonishment followed the
cries of terror.