of
diverging to the right or left, drew bridle at the door of Mr. Luke
Gamble, on the Blind Quay, attorney to the late Charles Nutter, and
jumping to the ground, delivered a rattling summons thereupon.

It was a dusty, dreary, wainscoted old house--indeed, two old houses
intermarried--with doors broken through the partition walls--the floors
not all of a level--joined by steps up and down--and having three great
staircases, that made it confusing. Through the windows it was not easy
to see, such a fantastic mapping of thick dust and dirt coated the
glass.

Luke Gamble, like the house, had seen better days. It was not his fault;
but an absconding partner had well nigh been his ruin: and, though he
paid their liabilities, it was with a strain, and left him a poor man,
shattered his connexion, and made the house too large by a great deal
for his business.

Doctor Toole came into the clerk's room, and was ushered by one of these
gentlemen through an empty chamber into the attorney's sanctum. Up two
steps stumbled the physician, cursing the house for a place where a
gentleman was so much more likely to break his neck than his fast, and
found old Gamble in his velvet cap and dressing-gown, in conference with
a hard-faced, pale, and pock-marked elderly man, squinting unpleasantly
under a black wig, who was narrating something slowly, and with effort,
like a man whose memory is labouring to give up its dead, while the
attorney, with his spectacles on his nose, was making notes. The speaker
ceased abruptly, and turned his pallid visage and jealous, oblique eyes
on the intruder.

Luke Gamble looked embarrassed, and shot one devilish angry glance at
his clerk, and then made Doctor Toole very welcome.

When Toole had ended his narrative, and the attorney read the notices
through, Mr. Gamble's countenance brightened, and darkened and
brightened again, and with a very significant look, he said to the pale,
unpleasant face, pitted with small-pox--

'M. M.,' and nodded.

His companion extended his hand toward the papers.

'Never mind,' said the attorney; 'there's that here will fix M. M. in a
mighty tight vice.'

'And who's M. M., pray?' enquired Toole.

'When were these notices served, doctor?' asked Mr. Gamble.

'Not an hour ago; but, I say, who the plague's M. M.?' answered Toole.

'M. M.,' repeated the attorney, smiling grimly on the backs of the
notices which lay on the table; 'why there's many queer things to be
h