Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/355

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The Green Bag.

them both dead, bridled his horse, and in the midst of the uproar forced his way. To the number of a hundred and fifty, armed with clubs, pitchforks, rakes, and whatever rustic weapons they could find, they pursued him, and drove him from his horse; but, to the astonishment of all, he again mounted, and with his sword cut his way through the crowd. Multitudes flocking from all quarters, the pursuit was renewed. He was a second time dismounted, and now employing his feet, he ran for the space of two miles; but when he halted to breathe a little, three hun dred were ready to oppose him. His cour age and strength, however, still remaining unsubdued, he burst through them, fled over a valley, threw off his clothes, seized his sword in his teeth, and plunged into the river in order to gain the opposite bank. To his sad surprise he perceived it cov ered with new opponents; he swam down the river, was pursued by several boats, until he took refuge on a small island. Deter mined to give him no time to recover from his fatigue, they attacked him there. Thus closely pressed, he plunged again into the river with his sword in his teeth; he was chased by the boats, and repeatedly struck

by their oars, and after having received several strokes on his head he was at last vanquished. He was conducted to a surgeon to have his wounds dressed, then led before a magistrate, who sent him to Bedford jail under a strong guard. Remaining there two weeks, until he was considerably recovered, a scaffold was erected in the market-place, and without a formal trial he was led forth to his execu tion, — a barbarous one, for he was literally hacked to pieces. Thanks to what we have related of Henry I., and to the Crusades which cleared the country of so many idlers and marauders, England for near a hundred years after Dun's death remained secure from domestic robbery and murder; and ever afterward the bandits that now and then in troubled times appeared, committed their iniquities on a minor scale. The Robin Hood and his outlaws of the next century, the rob bers of Cromwell's time, and the highway men of a still later period were but puny successors of Dun, and had such a strange spice of chivalry in their doings that pos terity rather. inclines to enjoy the romance of their exploits than to condemn, as it ought to do, the manifold errors of their ways.

A COURT-DAY IN FIJI. A BRIGHT sky vying with the sea for blueness, a sun whose rays are not too hot to be cooled by the sea-breeze, the dis tant roar of the great Pacific rollers as they break in foam on the coral reef, the whisper of the feathery palms as they wave their giant leaves above yonder cluster of brown native huts, — all these form a picture whose poetry is not easily reconciled with the stern prose of an 'English court of law. It is, perhaps, as well that the legal forms we are accustomed to have been modified to meet the wants of this remote province of the

Queen's dominions, — for the spot we are de scribing is accounted remote even in remote Fiji, and the people are proportionately primitive. The natives of Fiji are amenable to a criminal code known as the Native Reg ulations. These are administered by two courts, — the District Court, which sits monthly and is presided over by a native magistrate; and the Provincial Court, which assembles every three months before the English and native magistrates sitting to gether. From the latter there is no appeal except by petition to the governor, and it