"Are you ill, my boy? Tell me what it is! You frighten me, Luke!--you frighten me!" "I shall be better directly, father," panted Luke, with a strange look in his face. "But you are ill. Let me send for brandy." "No, no; I am better now! It is nothing. But tell me, father, I thought that man became partner with a Mr Walker?" "Yes, my boy; I believe it was a very old firm, trading as Esdaile and Co. No other names appeared." "Good heavens!" muttered Luke, who kept glancing at the brief and turning over its leaves. "Why, Luke!" exclaimed the old man, excitedly, as the state of the case flashed upon him. "You are not already engaged in this affair?" "I am, father," he said, with a strange pallor gathering in his face. "I have undertaken the prosecution of Cyril Mallow on behalf, it seems, of Mr Walker's executors, and I shall have to try and get him convicted." Father and son sat gazing blankly in each other's eyes, thinking of the future; and as Luke pondered on the position into which he had been thrown by fate, he saw that he should be, as it were, the hand of Nemesis standing ready to strike the heartless spendthrift down--that he was to be his own avenger of the wrongs that he had suffered from his enemy, and that no greater triumph could be his than that of pointing out, step by step, to the jury, the wrongdoings of this man, who would be standing in the felon's dock quailing before him, looking in his eyes for mercy, but finding none. He shuddered at the picture, for soon fresh faces appeared there--that of Sage, standing with supplicating hands and with her tearful, dilated eyes, seeming to ask him for pity for her children's sake. Then he saw the white-haired rector gazing at him piteously, and the suffering invalided mother who worshipped her son. Both were there, asking him what they had done that he should seek to convict him they loved. He looked up, and saw that his father was watching him with troubled face. "This--this is very terrible, my boy," he said. "I ought to have been sooner. But--but--must you take that side?" "I have promised, father. I would give anything to have been under the same promise to you. But I cannot, I will not stand up and accuse Cyril Mallow. Strive how I would, I should fight my hardest to get a verdict against him, and I could not afterwards bear the thought. I will get off taking this brief. Stay here while I go out." He took his hat, and was driven to his solicitors, where he had an interview with Mr Swift, and proposed that that gentleman should retire the brief from his hands. Mr Swift smiled, and shook his head. "No, Mr Ross," he said; "I have given you your price, and after a chat with my partner, he agreed that I had done right. The matter is settled, sir! I could not hear of such a thing."