In person, the junior partner of the firm of Beaumont and Storth was small, stout and stodgy, with a broad, flat nose, and eyes that a disparaging critic had likened to boiled onions. In address he was suavely deferential to the verge of obsequiousness to the local magnates, who liked the implied homage of his voice and look, and voted him a sensible young fellow who knew his place. In revenge for his own lackeydom he bullied and swore at his clerks and the waiters and the billiard-markers who ministered to his needs, and they, too, no doubt, had their opinion of Mr. Sam Storth. He was careful in his dress, without being an exquisite, took in the “Daily Telegraph” and “Bell’s Life,” affected a patriotic interest in the national sport, and played a very judicious hand at whist and other games, as the young nabobs of the club knew to their cost. He had the reputation, in a darkly, mysterious way, of being somewhat of a Lothario among the women, and it was known that he had access to the green-room of the local theatre. But if, indeed, Sam were a sad dog, of which this veracious history alleges nothing, he was a very discreet sad dog, and never imperilled his reputation by any open indiscretion. He was careful, too, to attend church every Sunday morning, and uttered the responses with that modulated fervour that is the hall-mark of good breeding, having neither the perfunctoriness of custom or inattention nor the warmth of spiritual exaltation. How two men so diverse as Edward Beaumont and Sam Storth came to be partners in the same business had puzzled many, but the explanation was simple enough. Beaumont had been in want of a managing clerk, and a mutual acquaintance had recommended Storth as a safe chamber-man, and a safe chamber-man or desk-lawyer Storth proved himself to be. He made no pretence of knowing more law than had sufficed to satisfy the not very exacting examiners of Carey Street; but he had a very considerable endowment of the not very common faculty called common-sense. “Law, sir,” was Storth’s favourite axiom, delivered oracularly, “law is the embodiment of common-sense,” and though the reader can scarcely be expected to believe it, Common law is largely common-sense. At all events with common-sense and a tincture of technicalities and a very considerable knowledge of the shady side of human nature, and a very small opinion of that nature in the general. Storth’s did very well the kind of work that Beaumont wanted him for, and left that somewhat fastidious young gentleman free to lift his voice in the courts without being harassed by the petty details of a lawyer’s practice. Beaumont thought Sam a soulless little animal, but shrewd and steady; Storth thought Beaumont a stuck-up enthusiast with a bee in his bonnet, but a good hand with a brief, and as they saw very little of each other except business hours, there was little friction in the busy office of the well-established and prosperous firm of Beaumont and Storth.