y were cards and he was telling my fortune, he
leaned over the table and said, with interrogating confidence:--

"I reckon you call that Mr. Manners of yours a good lawyer?"

We were very loyal to each other in the Club, and I replied with
youthful enthusiasm that he was considered one of the most promising at
the bar. And, remembering Tournelli, I added confidently that whoever
engaged him to look after their property interests had secured a
treasure.

"But is he good in criminal cases--before a police court, for instance?"
continued Tom.

I believed--I don't know on what grounds--that Manners was good in
insurance and admiralty law, and that he looked upon criminal practice
as low; but I answered briskly--though a trifle startled--that as a
criminal lawyer he was perfect.

"He could advise a man, who had a row hanging on, how to steer clear of
being up for murder--eh?"

I trusted, with a desperate attempt at jocosity, that neither he nor
Tournelli had been doing anything to require Manners's services in that
way.

"It would be too late, THEN," said Tom, coolly, "and ANYBODY could tell
a man what he ought to have done, or how to make the best of what he
had done; but the smart thing in a lawyer would be to give a chap points
BEFOREHAND, and sorter tell him how far he could go, and yet keep
inside the law. How he might goad a fellow to draw on him, and then plug
him--eh?"

I looked up quickly. There was nothing in his ordinary, good-humored,
but not very strong face to suggest that he himself was the subject of
this hypothetical case. If he were speaking for Tournelli, the Italian
certainly was not to be congratulated on his ambassador's prudence; and,
above all, Manners was to be warned of the interpretation which might be
put upon his counsels, and disseminated thus publicly. As I was thinking
what to say, he moved away, but suddenly returned again.

"What made you think Tournelli had been up to anything?" he asked
sharply.

"Nothing," I answered; "I only thought you and he, being friends"--

"You mean we're both waiters in the same restaurant. Well, I don't know
him any better than I know that chap over there," pointing to the other
waiter. "He's a Greaser or an Italian, and, I reckon, goes with his
kind."

Why had we not thought of this before? Nothing would be more natural
than that the rich and imperious Tournelli should be exclusive, and have
no confidences with his enforced associates. And it was