"My captain, sir! The Duke of Marlborough! Perhaps you will have heard of him!" The speaker stomps right into Star Chamber, moving in an uneven gait: a uniformed Colonel with a peg-leg of carven ebony. Then he stops, realizing he’s just burst in upon a solemn moment, and doesn’t know what to say. It promptly gets worse: recent evolutions have given the Lords waiting in the side chamber the idea that they have been missing out on something. Most of them choose this moment to debouche into the Star Chamber wearing expressions that say, "Explain, or be hanged!"