ords with the grave
senior at the desk, strolls across to the bank.

No sooner has the door closed behind him than a shoal of clerks come
tripping down on tip-toe, and others appear from the back of the house.
They make use of the opportunity for a little gossip. Voices are heard in
the passage, and an aged and infirm labouring man is helped in by a woman
and a younger man. The clerks take no notice, and the poor old follow
props himself against the wall, not daring to take a chair. He is a
witness. He can neither read nor write, but he can recollect 'thuck ould
tree,' and can depose to a fact worth perhaps hundreds of pounds. He has
come in to be examined; he will be driven in a week or two's time from the
village to the railway station in a fly, and will talk about it and his
visit to London till the lamp of life dies out.

A footman calls with a note, a groom brings another, the letters are
carelessly cast aside, till one of the juniors, who has been watching from
the peephole, reports that the chief clerk is coming, and everybody
scuttles back to his place. Callers come still more thickly; another
solicitor, well-to-do, and treated with the utmost deference; more
tradesmen; farmers; two or three auctioneers, in quick succession; the
well-brushed editor of a local paper; a second attorney, none too well
dressed, with scrubby chin and face suspiciously cloudy, with an odour of
spirits and water and tobacco clinging to his rusty coat. He belongs to a
disappearing type of country lawyer, and is the wreck, perhaps, of high
hopes and good opportunities. Yet, wreck as he is, when he gets up at the
Petty Sessions to defend some labourer, the bench of magistrates listen to
his maundering argument as deferentially as if he were a Q.C. They pity
him, and they respect his cloth. The scrubby attorney whistles a tune, and
utters an oath when he learns the principal is engaged. Then he marches
out, with his hat on one side of his head, to take another 'refresher.'

Two telegrams arrive, and are thrown aside; then a gentleman appears, whom
the senior goes out to meet with an air of deference, and whom he actually
conducts himself upstairs to the principal's room. It is a local banker,
who is thus admitted to the directors' consultation. The slow hand of the
clock goes round, and, sitting wearily on the hard chair, you wonder if
ever it will be possible to see this much-sought man. By-and-by a door
opens above, there is a great sou