nine o'clock
The ballast of that grave intellect was flung overboard so that the ship of fools might drift the faster . But in Westminster Hall , upon this windy November morning , nobody thought of Clarendon . The business of the day was interesting enough to obliterate all considerations of yesterday . The young barristers , who were learning their trade by listening to their betters , had been shivering on their benches in the Common Pleas since nine o'clock , in that chilly corner where every blast from the north or north-east swept over the low wooden partition that enclosed the court , or cut through the chinks in the panelling . The students and juniors were in their usual places , sitting at the feet of their favourite Common-law Judge ; but the idlers who came for amusement , to saunter about the hall , haggle for books with the second-hand dealers along the south wall , or flirt with the milliners who kept stalls for bands and other legal finery on the opposite side , or to listen on tiptoe , with an ear above the panelled enclosure , to the quips and cranks or fierce rhetoric of a famous advocate -- these to-day gravitated with one accord towards the south-west corner of the Hall , where , in the Court of King 's Bench , Richard Revel , Baron Fareham , of Fareham , Hants , was to be tried by a Buckinghamshire jury for abduction , with fraud , malice , and violence , and for assault , with intent to murder . The rank of the offender being high , and the indictment known to involve tragic details of family history , there had been much talk of the cause which was on the paper for to-day ; and , as a natural consequence , besides the habitual loungers and saunterers , gossips , and book-buyers , there was a considerable sprinkling of persons of quality , who perfumed the not too agreeable atmosphere with pulvilio and Florentine iris powder , and the rustle of whose silks and brocades was audible all over the Hall . Not often did such gowns sweep the dust brought in by plebeian feet , nor such Venetian point collars rub shoulders with the frowsy Norwich drugget worn by hireling perjurers or starveling clerks .