IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAP. III. In the course of the next three months, Mr Blackford’s relations with his crazy client Willoughby entered upon a somewhat uncomfortable phase. He had continued his heartless game with the poor wretch, entertaining him with purely imaginative accounts of the superhuman exertions which were being made on his behalf, and bleeding him with a rapacity which grew with each successive extortion. He had in this way obtained nearly a hundred pounds, when something happened which he might have foreseen had he not been blinded by his greed, and which caused him to entertain very unpleasant misgivings. Had Willoughby been a sane man, pursuing a sane object, these repeated demands for money, unaccompanied by any tangible performance, would have aroused suspicions which would have manifested themselves in the usual manner. But being as he was, his disease coloured everything which happened to him; and the perfectly natural suspicions which arose in his mind made themselves heard only by the mocking voices of his airy persecutors. So one morning he informed Mr Blackford that the persons who followed him wherever he went had adopted fresh tactics. ‘They have managed to find out what I come here for,’ said he, ‘and they are trying to frighten me out of doing so in a very curious way. In fact,’ he continued with an uneasy laugh, ‘they have taken to slandering you as well.’ ‘And what are they good enough to say about me?’ inquired the solicitor, in much surprise. ‘Of course I pay no attention to it. I have every confidence in you; I am sure you are doing the best you can for me—as you are, are you not?’ added the unfortunate client, with a look of pitiful appeal, which would have softened the heart of any but a necessitous and perfectly unprincipled man. As it was, Mr Blackford experienced an unpleasant spasm in the place where his conscience used to be, before it had dwindled away like an unused muscle. ‘Of course I am,’ he replied. ‘I hope you don’t doubt it?’ ‘Oh, certainly not; on the contrary,’ returned Willoughby, with a courteous bow. ‘But last night they mentioned your name in a most unpleasant way. “He went to the wrong man when he went to Blackford.” That was what one of them said. And another answered: “Yes, Blackford is altogether on our side. He’ll spend all his money on Blackford, and get no good whatever.” And they said—they said—— I can’t remember everything; but it was all to the same effect. Of course that kind of thing makes a man uneasy—naturally. Isn’t it disgraceful that the law can do nothing to protect one from such persecution?’