otsteps sounded, and the clang
of doors, and the shriek of unwilling keys in rusty locks, and
the hurrying traffic of the street without, softened by the moist
atmosphere, was like the fading echo of following feet upon the stairs.

Lights sprang up in the basement windows, telling of protractive legal
labours. Lights twinkled in the garrets, telling of lonely study or
noisy conviviality in the coming hours of darkness. At length one side
of the quadrangle viewed by a solitary watcher from a third-floor window
of the opposing side, winked with a hundred windows through the wet air
and deepening shadow like a blear-eyed Argus.

This watcher, lounging at his own window, was Mr. Philip Bommaney,
recently self-entitled the 'Solitary of Gable Inn.' He was
eight-and-twenty years of age or thereabouts, a broad-shouldered,
deep-chested, manly-looking fellow, with curling brown hair, and a face
expressive of pugnacity, good-humour, and many capacities. He was a
little weary now, after a long day of satisfactory work. He watched the
mounting shadows, and listened to the weird gamut of the wind among
the telegraph lines, until the outer voices made his own dull room seem
homely. One ruddy tongue of flame from the expiring fire in the
grate played on the narrow walls and low ceiling, and woke twinkling
reflections in the spare and battered furniture. A man's dwelling-place
is always an index to his character when its arrangement depends upon
himself; and signs of Philip Bommaney's nature and pursuits were visible
in plenty here. There were symmetrical rows of books on the shelves
flanking the fire-place. An orderly stack of newspapers occupied one
corner of the room, and a set of boxing-gloves lay on top of the pile,
and a pair of dumb-bells beside it. A shaded reading-lamp stood upon the
table in the midst of a great litter of papers. The barrels of a huge
elephant gun flashed dimly from the wall as the firelight played upon
them, and two or three lighter weapons were ranged together lower down.

He turned from the window and lit the lamp, and, wheeling round, held
up the light to a photograph, and studied it with a pleased face. It was
the portrait of a pretty girl, very sweetly grave, and looking as if it
could be very sweetly vivacious. When he had looked at it for a longish
time he nodded and smiled, as if the pictured lips had actually spoken
to him. There was a tumbler standing beside the photograph with a bunch
of hothous