The advocate, trembling in every limb, was conscious of a powerful and confident grasp of the hand. And then as his eyes encountered the outlines of his visitor, he was seized with a pang of disappointment, for he had looked to see something different. “Don’t you know me, Mr. Northcote?” said the voice--the conventional voice which had already smote the starving man with a sense of the intolerable. “I am afraid I do not,” he said, heavily. “Well, I thought Samuel Whitcomb was known to every member of the bar.” Mr. Whitcomb’s whimsical air strove to cloak a wound to his professional feelings. “Ah, yes, of course, Mr. Whitcomb; of course,” said the young man, with a deeper disappointment fixing its talons upon him. “Of course--Mr. Whitcomb, the solicitor,” he added, hastily, as through the haze of the unreal which still enveloped his amazed and stupefied senses he caught a familiar aspect and a tone that he recalled. “The same.” “Excuse this inhospitable darkness,” said Northcote. “Here is a chair; and try, if you please, to keep your patience while I put some oil in the lamp and seek a piece of coal for the fire.” “No elaborate scheme of welcome, I beg. Your client is not a prince of the blood, but a common lawyer.” A well-fed and highly sagacious chuckle accompanied this sally on the part of the solicitor. Still in the throes of his stupefaction, Northcote addressed himself to the oil-can and the coal-box, that as far as the circumstances would permit a reception might be accorded to this unexpected guest, whose common and prosaic quality had already jarred upon every fibre of his being. And these preparations, diffidently conducted, kindled again the well-fed chuckle of the solicitor; and so ingratiating was it that it seemed to banish all appearance of constraint by imparting an air of equality to everything in the world. The lamp flared up under the influence of the dregs of fuel that had been added to it, and revealed the pale and wasted features of the garret’s inhabitant. The solicitor, with the quickness of the trained observer, pursed up his lips in a suppressed whistle. A kind of pity softened the relentless composure of his eyes as they beheld the haggard and unkempt bearing of the man before them. “Poor devil,” he muttered; “literally starving.” It was in this succinct yet compendious manner that Mr. Whitcomb filed for reference all facts which are sufficiently obvious to stand as knowledge. “Do you know,” said Northcote, suddenly, “I was half-expecting somebody to-night.” “Sitting in state to receive him, evidently,” the solicitor muttered, as he sniffed the temperature of the garret and glanced oddly from the fireless grate to the gloves and overcoat that Northcote was wearing. “Dining out together, were you?” “To speak the truth,” said the advocate, with an odd laugh, “I had hardly got so far as to consider the personage I was half-expecting in such a grossly material aspect.”