d I could tell they were the footsteps of
clients. A few came a little higher still, and then my hopes rose
with the footsteps. Now some one had come up to the third floor: he
stopped! Alas! there was the knock, one single hard knock: it was a
junior clerk. The sound came all too soon for me, and I turned from my
own door to my little den and looked out of my window up into the sky,
from whence it seemed I might just as well expect a brief as from the
regions below.

This was not quite true. On another occasion some bold adventurer
ascended with asthmatical energy to the _fourth floor_, and I thought
as I heard him wheeze he would never have breath enough to get down
again, and wondered if the good-natured attorneys kept these wheezy
old gentlemen out of charity. But it was rare indeed that the climber,
unless it was the rent collector, reached that floor.

The fifth landing was too remote for the postman, for I never got
a letter--at least so it seemed; and no squirrel watching from the
topmost bough of the tallest pine could be more lonely than I.

At last I thought a step had passed even the fourth landing, and was
approaching mine; but I would not think too fast, and damped my hopes
a little on purpose lest they should burn too brightly and too fast. I
was not mistaken: there _was_ a footstep on my landing, and I listened
for the one heavy knock. It seemed to me I waited about an hour and a
half, judging by the palpitations of my heart, and wished the man had
knocked as vigorously. But I was rewarded: the knocker fell, and as my
boy was away with the toothache, I opened the door myself. He was the
same wheezy man I had heard below some time before; and I really seem
to have liked asthmatical people ever since--except when I became a
judge and they disturbed me in court.

"Papers!"

That is enough to say to any one who understands the situation. You
may be sure I gave them my best attention, that they were finished
promptly, and, as I hoped, in the best style. If I had required any
additional incentive to keep me to my daily task of watching, this
would have been sufficient; but I wanted none. I knew that my whole
future depended upon it, and there I was from ten in the morning till
ten at night.

My first fee was small, but it was the biggest fee I ever had. It was
10s. 6d. I was only a special pleader, and with some papers our fees
were even less; we only had to _draw_ pleadings, not to open them in
court--