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

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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.

"Sir Norman Kingsley! Sir Norman Kingsley!" rang from lip to lip of

those who recognized him; and all drew closer, and looked at him as if

they really could not make up their mind to believe their eyes. As

for Sir Norman himself, that gentleman was destined literally, if not

metaphorically, to fall on his legs that night, and had alighted on

the crimson velvet-carpet, cat-like, on his feet. In reference to his

feelings--his first was one of frantic disapproval of going down;

his second, one of intense astonishment of finding himself there with

unbroken bones; his third, a disagreeable conviction that he had about

put his foot in it, and was in an excessively bad fix; and last, but

not least, a firm and rooted determination to make the beet of a bad

bargain, and never say die.

His first act was to take off his plumed hat, and make a profound

obeisance to her majesty the queen, who was altogether too much

surprised to make the return politeness demanded, and merely stared at

him with her great, beautiful, brilliant eyes, as if she would never

have done.




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