de
reference to Ballarat and his acquaintance with the lawyer's father:
"Who directed me to you, sir, for advice on a vexatious affair, in
which I have had the misfortune to become involved."

With a "Pray be seated!" Ocock rose and cleared a chair for Purdy.
Resuming his seat he joined his hands, and wound them in and out. "I
think you may take it from me that no case is so unpromising but what
we shall be able to find a loophole."

Mahony thanked him--with a touch of reserve. "I trust you will still be
of that opinion when you have heard the facts." And went on: "Myself, I
do not doubt it. I am not a rich man, but serious though the monetary
loss would be to me, I should settle the matter out of court, were I
not positive that I had right on my side." To which Ocock returned a
quick: "Oh, quite so ... of course."

Like his old father, he was a short, heavily built man; but there the
likeness ended. He had a high, domed forehead, above a thin, hooked
nose. His skin was of an almost Jewish pallor. Fringes of straight,
jet-black hair grew down the walls of his cheeks and round his chin,
meeting beneath it. The shaven upper lid was long and flat, with no
central markings, and helped to form a mouth that had not much more
shape or expression than a slit cut by a knife in a sheet of paper. The
chin was bare to the size of a crown-piece; and, both while he spoke
and while he listened to others speaking, the lawyer caressed this
patch with his finger-tips; so that in the course of time it had
arrived at a state of high polish--like the shell of an egg.

The air with which he heard his new client out was of a non-committal
kind; and Mahony, having talked his first heat off, grew chilled by the
wet blanket of Ocock's silence. There was nothing in this of the frank
responsiveness with which your ordinary mortal lends his ear. The brain
behind the dome was, one might be sure, adding, combining, comparing,
and drawing its own conclusions. Why should lawyers, he wondered, treat
those who came to them like children, advancing only in so far as it
suited them out of the darkness where they housed among strangely
worded paragraphs and obscure formulas?--But these musings were cut
short. Having fondled his chin for a further moment, Ocock looked up
and put a question. And, while he could not but admire the lawyer's
acumen, this did not lessen Mahony's discomfort. All unguided, it went
straight for what he believed to be the one wea