ed to admit the several members of the bar, invited to
partake of Mrs. Rooney's hospitalities. Mrs. Rooney's, I say; for
the etiquette of the circuit forbidding the attorney to entertain the
dignitaries of the craft, Paul was only present at his own table on
sufferance, and sought out the least obtrusive place he could find among
the juniors and side-dishes.

No one who could have seen the gay, laughing, merry mob of shrewd,
cunning-looking men that chatted away there would have imagined them a
few moments previously engaged in a question where the lives of four of
their fellow-men hung in the balance, and where at the very moment the
deliberation was continuing that should, perhaps, sentence them to death
upon the scaffold.

The instincts of a profession are narrow and humiliating things to
witness. The surgeon who sees but in the suffering agony of his patient
the occasional displacement of certain anatomical details is little
better than a savage; the lawyer who watches the passions of hope and
fear, distrust, dread, and suspicion, only to take advantage of them
in his case, is far worse than a savage. I confess, on looking at these
men, I could never divest myself of the impression that the hired and
paid-for passion of the advocate, the subtlety that is engaged special,
the wit that is briefed, the impetuous rush of indignant eloquence that
is bottled up from town to town in circuit, and like soda-water grows
weaker at every corking, make but a poor _ensemble_ of qualities for the
class who, _par excellence_, stand at the head of professional life.

One there was, indeed, whose haggard eye and blanched cheek showed no
semblance of forgetting the scene in which so lately he had been an
actor. This was the lawyer who had defended the prisoners. He sat in a
window, resting his head upon his hand--fatigue, exhaustion, but more
than all, intense feeling, portrayed in every lineament of his pale
face.

'Ah,' said the gay, jovial-looking attorney-general, slapping him
familiarly on the shoulder--'ah, my dear fellow; not tired, I hope. The
court was tremendously hot; but come, rally a bit: we shall want you.
Bennet and O'Grady have disappointed us, it seems; but you are a host in
yourself.'

'Maybe so,' replied the other faintly, and scarce lifting his eyes; 'but
you can't depend on my elevation.'

The ease and readiness of the reply, as well as the tones of the voice,
struck me; and I perceived that it was no other