identify his profile. Then he looked around him for some one in the same cause, who might tell him when it was coming on. Fortunately he found his next-door neighbour, on whose lap he had all the time been unceremoniously sitting, able to give him some information. Wrangham, it so chanced, held a brief in itso Harold ventured to ask him "if he knew whereabouts in the list the cause stood."

"I know nothing about it," said Wrangham, without taking his eyes off a huge brief which was at this moment evidently engrossing all his attention.

"I thought you said you were in it," replied St. Just.

"So I am, but it's a mere 'Consent. No occasion to look at it-I've signed my name, and sent it off long ago, and bagged my fee. What more do I want with it?"

"Signed it before it comes off!' shan't you say anything then," continued Harold, "when it's called on?"

"Say anything? of course not.

I tell you

I've not read it. That would be a green trick indeed. Never read a' Consent.' It only takes up his time," he added, raising his eyes for an instant at the Judge, but not at Harold. “Nothing he hates so much."

"But I have a 'leader' in it. I suppose there must be something more in it than you think," continued Harold.

"A'leader' in a consent! Well your client does lay it on thick, I must say."

At this moment the Bench called loudly for air, and two or three windows were instantly let down by the Court Criers. Harold himself would have given half his day's earnings for a draught of oxygen. But he was much too busy at the moment to think of anything else but his first 'cause.'

At length he thought he heard the name of it called on; and certainly he did see his 'leader' rise at some distance at that moment, though Wrangham still went on reading. Feeling in honour bound to signify at least his presence to the Judge, notwithstanding his neighbour's cau

tion, he suddenly rose, and at the top of his voice exclaimed that, "if his Honour pleased, he appeared for the defendant;" but the Judge was by this time nodding a benevolent assent in quite a different direction of the Court, to some other "Consent petitioner," and had forgotten all about his cause (if he had ever thought of it) among the one hundred and ninety others, which were crammed into his list for the Last day of Term, and which he prided himself on despatching at about the rate of one to the minute.

Harold had done his duty, and had nothing to upbraid himself with; but he thought over the morning's work, and put into his purse the guineas which awaited him on his return to Chambers, with feelings not unlike those with which many a gentlemanly highwayman of the last century must have pocketed the price of a safe passage over Salisbury plain from travellers down the road. Could he have met his client at that moment, what report of quid pro quo could he have given him? There were his guineas, what had he given him in return?

Here was a confessedly large class of cases, which neither Bench nor Bar troubled themselves to read, (though the Solicitor's clerks did to write out) which the one signed without being present when they were called on, and the other gave orders on, without so much as hearing or asking anything about them! Nay, after all had been done, what was it beyond contributing to keep up an expensive and cumbrous establishment? His just mind was shocked, and demanded an abolition of the anomaly: for Justice is the birthright of every Englishman, and Cheap Law far more clearly and inalienably our due, than Cheap Bread!

P

CHAPTER XIV.

"Upon what I said, in relation to our Courts of Justice, His Majesty desired to be satisfied in several instances; and this I was the better able to do, having been formerly almost ruined by a long suit in Chancery, which was decreed for me with costs." SWIFT.

HY, what is Harry about?" said Lord
Athelstane, as throwing away a half-

finished cigar on the pavement of the

Quadrant, he called a cab, and desired the driver to set him down at the Adelphi. "I hear all sorts of things about him. Come, Charlie, you hear of him oftener than I do, what is it all about?"

"Turned Lawyer to the backbone, as far as I can make out. But I have not seen him for an age."

"The very last man in the world I should