Elmen awaited him, looking him over lazily. It was a trick of Elmen's, which Calvin well knew, and yet which always irritated him. Elmen had large, greenish, heavy-lidded eyes capable of a peculiarly contemptuous squint of sleepy unconcern which, on occasion, he embroidered with a frog-like yawn. Now he decided to compliment Calvin with his yawn, which he illy concealed with the long, tapering fingers of his right hand. He tapped his parted lips and asked, "You are quite ready?" as though he wished to be sure before he took the trouble to wake up.
"Quite," returned Calvin, coldly, and Elmen opened wide his eyes and spun about alertly.
"Your honor, we are come before this court because we are obliged to appeal to your honor to obtain for this man the right set in the charter of free society and assured to every man six hundred years ago. Your honor," declaimed Elmen, "since the people of England wrested the magna charta from the tyrant John, in the swamp of Runnymede, the statute of every free state has declared that no man may be imprisoned by another, be he prince, tyrant or state's attorney, save by due process of law. The question, as your honor knows, is not debatable," Elmen continued, turning to Calvin as offensively as possible and, picking up a paper, he read in his loud, raspIng voice the formal petition for the person of Frederic Ketlar.
Weigal, of the Echo Garden, appeared as the petitioner, citing the charter won by the English long ago on that field of Runnymede. For a moment, Calvin's mind jumped from the immediate proceedings. His forefathers, or at least men of his blood, were the fighters on that field. Where were Elmen's and Weigal's, then? Usurers in some Polish or Austrian city, they had been, he thought.
