events appeared to have come to pass in one particular place--and that rather an odd one, viz. in "_the parish of Saint Mary Le Bow, in the ward of Cheap, in the city of London_."[16] If you had been better acquainted with Mr. Weasel's associations and mode of doing business, you would have discovered that, in _his_ imagination, almost all the occurrences of life took place at this same spot! But to return--thus was that astute little pleader engaged when they entered. He was a bachelor, upwards of forty; was of spare make, of low stature, had a thin, sharp, sallow face, and short stiff black hair; there was an appearance about the eyes as if they were half-blinded with being incessantly directed to white paper; he had a furrowed forehead, a small pursed-up mouth--one hardly knew why, but really there was something about his look that instantly suggested to you the image of the creature whose name he bore. He was a ravenous lawyer, darting at the point and pith of every case he was concerned in, and sticking to it--just as would his bloodthirsty namesake at the neck of a rabbit. In _law_ he lived, moved, and had his being. In his dreams he was everlastingly spinning out pleadings which he never could understand, and hunting for cases which he could not discover. In the daytime, however, he was more successful. In fact, everything he saw, heard, or read of--wherever he was, whatever he was doing, suggested to him questions of law, that might arise out of it. At his sister's wedding (whither he had not gone without reluctance) he got into a wrangle with the bridegroom, on a question started by himself, (Weasel,) whether an _infant_ was liable for goods supplied to his wife, before marriage. At his grandmother's funeral he got into an intricate discussion with a puzzled proctor about _bona notabilia_, with reference to a pair of horn spectacles, which the venerable deceased had left behind her in Scotland, and a poodle in the Isle of Man; and at church, the reading of the parable of the _Unjust Steward_, set his devout, ingenious, and fertile mind at work for the remainder of the service, as to the modes of stating the case, now-a-days, against the offender, and whether it would be more advisable to proceed civilly or criminally; and if the former, at law or in equity. He was a hard-headed man; very clear and acute, and accurate in his legal knowledge; every other sort he despised, if, indeed, he had more than the faintest notion, from hearsay, of its existence. He was a Cambridge man; and there had read nothing but mathematics, in which he had made a decent figure. As soon as he had taken his degree, he migrated to the Temple, where he had ever since continued engaged in the study, and then the successful practice, of the law, as a special pleader under the bar. He had a very large business, which he got through ably and rapidly. He scarcely ever went into society; early want of opportunity for doing so, had at length abated his desire for it--to