Unnamed Justice of the Peace 8

The Justice of the Peace in Whiteleaf who presides over the trials Armstid vs. Snopes and Tull vs. Snopes in The Hamlet is a "neat, small, plump old man resembling a tender caricature of all grandfathers who ever breathed" (357). With "neat, faintly curling white hair," he wears "steel-framed spectacles" overtop of "lens-distorted and irisless" eyes (357-8). His "immaculate" (359) appearance similarly gives way to the infirmities of age as when he falls into "an old man's light sleep" (362) during the trial and repeatedly attempts to hide or quiet his hands, which "tremble with an old man's palsy" (366). His attempts to impose both rationality and the rule of law on what happened at the auction end in his exasperation.