further?"

CHAPTER XII

THE LURID PAST OF JNO. PETERS

"That's right!" said Sir Mallaby Marlowe. "Work while you're young, Sam,
work while you're young." He regarded his son's bent head with
affectionate approval. "What's the book to-day?"

"Widgery on Nisi Prius Evidence," said Sam, without looking up.

"Capital!" said Sir Mallaby. "Highly improving and as interesting as a
novel--some novels. There's a splendid bit on, I think, page two hundred
and fifty-four where the hero finds out all about Copyhold and Customary
Estates. It's a wonderfully powerful situation. It appears--but I won't
spoil it for you. Mind you don't skip to see how it all comes out in the
end!" Sir Mallaby suspended conversation while he addressed an imaginary
ball with the mashie which he had taken out of his golf-bag. For this
was the day when he went down to Walton Heath for his weekly foursome
with three old friends. His tubby form was clad in tweed of a violent
nature, with knickerbockers and stockings. "Sam!"

"Well?"

"Sam, a man at the club showed me a new grip the other day. Instead of
overlapping the little finger of the right hand.... Oh, by the way,
Sam."

"Yes?"

"I should lock up the office to-day if I were you, or anxious clients
will be coming in and asking for advice, and you'll find yourself in
difficulties. I shall be gone, and Peters is away on his holiday. You'd
better lock the outer door."

"All right," said Sam absently. He was finding Widgery stiff reading. He
had just got to the bit about Raptu Haeredis, which--as of course you
know, is a writ for taking away an heir holding in socage.

Sir Mallaby looked at his watch.

"Well, I'll have to be going. See you later, Sam."

"Good-bye."

Sir Mallaby went out, and Sam, placing both elbows on the desk and
twining his fingers in his hair, returned with a frown of consternation
to his grappling with Widgery. For perhaps ten minutes the struggle was
an even one, then gradually Widgery got the upper hand. Sam's mind,
numbed by constant batterings against the stony ramparts of legal
phraseology, weakened, faltered, and dropped away; and a moment later
his thoughts, as so often happened when he was alone, darted off and
began to circle round the image of Billie Bennett.

Since they had last met, at Sir Mallaby's dinner-table, Sam had told
himself perhaps a hundred times that he cared nothing about Billie, that
she had gone out of his life and was dead to him;