ings with the late
legal firm of Wibird and Penhallow, which had naturally passed into
the hands of the new partnership, Penhallow and Bradshaw. He had entire
confidence in the senior partner, but not so much in the young man who
had been recently associated in the business.

Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, commonly called by his last two names, was
the son of a lawyer of some note for his acuteness, who marked out his
calling for him in having him named after the great Lord Mansfield.
Murray Bradshaw was about twenty-five years old, by common consent
good-looking, with a finely formed head, a searching eye, and a
sharp-cut mouth, which smiled at his bidding without the slightest
reference to the real condition of his feeling at the moment. This was
a great convenience; for it gave him an appearance of good-nature at
the small expense of a slight muscular movement which was as easy as
winking, and deceived everybody but those who had studied him long and
carefully enough to find that this play of his features was what a watch
maker would call a detached movement.

He had been a good scholar in college, not so much by hard study as
by skilful veneering, and had taken great pains to stand well with the
Faculty, at least one of whom, Byles Gridley, A. M., had watched him
with no little interest as a man with a promising future, provided he
were not so astute as to outwit and overreach himself in his excess of
contrivance. His classmates could not help liking him; as to loving him,
none of them would have thought of that. He was so shrewd, so keen, so
full of practical sense, and so good-humored as long as things went on
to his liking, that few could resist his fascination. He had a way of
talking with people about what they were interested in, as if it were
the one matter in the world nearest to his heart. But he was commonly
trying to find out something, or to produce some impression, as a
juggler is working at his miracle while he keeps people's attention by
his voluble discourse and make-believe movements. In his lightest talk
he was almost always edging towards a practical object, and it was an
interesting and instructive amusement to watch for the moment at which
he would ship the belt of his colloquial machinery on to the tight
pulley. It was done so easily and naturally that there was hardly a sign
of it. Master Gridley could usually detect the shifting action, but the
young man's features and voice never betrayed him