he articled
gents to the ragged writers and white-faced runners, in clothes too
tight for them, as he sate there tapping his boot with his cane, and
thinking what a parcel of miserable poor devils these were. The
miserable poor devils knew all about his affairs. They talked about
them over their pints of beer at their public-house clubs to other
clerks of a night. Ye gods, what do not attorneys and attorneys' clerks
know in London! Nothing is hidden from their inquisition, and their
families mutely rule our city.

Perhaps George expected, when he entered Mr. Higgs's apartment, to find
that gentleman commissioned to give him some message of compromise or
conciliation from his father; perhaps his haughty and cold demeanour
was adopted as a sign of his spirit and resolution: but if so, his
fierceness was met by a chilling coolness and indifference on the
attorney's part, that rendered swaggering absurd. He pretended to be
writing at a paper, when the Captain entered. "Pray, sit down, sir,"
said he, "and I will attend to your little affair in a moment. Mr.
Poe, get the release papers, if you please"; and then he fell to
writing again.

Poe having produced those papers, his chief calculated the amount of
two thousand pounds stock at the rate of the day; and asked Captain
Osborne whether he would take the sum in a cheque upon the bankers, or
whether he should direct the latter to purchase stock to that amount.
"One of the late Mrs. Osborne's trustees is out of town," he said
indifferently, "but my client wishes to meet your wishes, and have done
with the business as quick as possible."

"Give me a cheque, sir," said the Captain very surlily. "Damn the
shillings and halfpence, sir," he added, as the lawyer was making out
the amount of the draft; and, flattering himself that by this stroke of
magnanimity he had put the old quiz to the blush, he stalked out of the
office with the paper in his pocket.

"That chap will be in gaol in two years," Mr. Higgs said to Mr. Poe.

"Won't O. come round, sir, don't you think?"

"Won't the monument come round," Mr. Higgs replied.

"He's going it pretty fast," said the clerk. "He's only married a
week, and I saw him and some other military chaps handing Mrs.
Highflyer to her carriage after the play." And then another case was
called, and Mr. George Osborne thenceforth dismissed from these worthy
gentlemen's memory.

The draft was upon our friends Hulker and Bullock of Lombard S