see you think it and hear it too."

"It's rather hard to me, I'm afraid," said Tom, with the puzzled look
intensifying in his frank, pleasant face.

"Hard, sir!" said the man, smiling, and wiping the pen he held on the
tail of his coat, though it did not require it, and then he kept on
holding it up to his eye as if there were a hair or bit of grit between
the nibs. "Yes, I should just think it is hard. Nutshells is nothing
to it. Just like bits of granite stones as they mend the roads with.
They won't fit nowhere till you wear 'em and roll 'em down. The law is
a hard road and no mistake."

"And--and I don't think I'm very clever at it, Pringle."

"Clever! You'd be a rum one, sir, if you was. Nobody ever masters it
all. They pretend to, but it would take a thousand men boiled down and
double distilled to get one as could regularly tackle it. It's an
impossibility, sir."

"What!" said Tom, with plenty of animation now. "Why, look at all the
great lawyers!"

"So I do, sir, and the judges too, and what do I see? Don't they all
think different ways about things, and upset one another? Don't you get
thinking you're not clever because you don't get on fast. As I said
before, you'd be a rum one if you did."

"But my cousin does," said Tom.

"Him? Ck!" cried the clerk, with a derisive laugh. "Why, it's my
belief that you know more law already than Mr Sam does, and what I say
to you is--Look out! the guv'nor!"

The warning came too late, for Mr James Brandon entered the outer
office suddenly, and stopped short, to look sharply from one to the
other--a keen-eyed, well-dressed man of five-and-forty; and as his brows
contracted he said sharply--

"Then you've finished the deed, Pringle?" just as the clerk was in the
act of passing through the door leading to the room where he should have
been at work.

"The deed, sir?--no, not quite, sir. Shan't be long, sir."

"You shall be long--out of work, Mr Pringle, if you indulge in the bad
habit of idling and gossiping as soon as my back's turned."

Pringle shot back to his desk, the door swung to, and Mr James Brandon
turned to his nephew, with his face looking double of aspect--that is to
say, the frown was still upon his brow, while a peculiarly tight-looking
smile appeared upon his lips, which seemed to grow thinner and longer,
and as if a parenthesis mark appeared at each end to shut off the smile
as something illegal.

"I am glad you are mastering your