on this side, and landaus came down on the other--the former to
lumber heavily through the old-established contractors' gates, the latter
to sweep fashionably into the square.

About twelve o'clock on the day following Lord Mountclere's exhibition of
himself to Christopher in the jeweller's shop at Melchester, and almost
at the identical time when the viscount was seen to come from the office
for marriage-licences in the same place, a carriage drove nearly up to
the gates of Messrs. Nockett and Co.'s yard. A gentleman stepped out and
looked around. He was a man whose years would have been pronounced as
five-and-forty by the friendly, fifty by the candid, fifty-two or three
by the grim. He was as handsome a study in grey as could be seen in
town, there being far more of the raven's plumage than of the gull's in
the mixture as yet; and he had a glance of that practised sort which can
measure people, weigh them, repress them, encourage them to sprout and
blossom as a March sun encourages crocuses, ask them questions, give them
answers--in short, a glance that could do as many things as an American
cooking-stove or a multum-in-parvo pocket-knife. But, as with most men
of the world, this was mere mechanism: his actual emotions were kept so
far within his person that they were rarely heard or seen near his
features.

On reading the builders' names over the gateway he entered the yard, and
asked at the office if Solomon Chickerel was engaged on the premises. The
clerk was going to be very attentive, but finding the visitor had come
only to speak to a workman, his tense attitude slackened a little, and he
merely signified the foot of a Flemish ladder on the other side of the
yard, saying, 'You will find him, sir, up there in the joiner's shop.'

When the man in the black coat reached the top he found himself at the
end of a long apartment as large as a chapel and as low as a malt-room,
across which ran parallel carpenters' benches to the number of twenty or
more, a gangway being left at the side for access throughout. Behind
every bench there stood a man or two, planing, fitting, or chiselling, as
the case might be. The visitor paused for a moment, as if waiting for
some cessation of their violent motions and uproar till he could make his
errand known. He waited ten seconds, he waited twenty; but, beyond that
a quick look had been thrown upon him by every pair of eyes, the muscular
performances were in no way interrup