Great Britain -- History -- 18th century -- Fiction
'We must have time,' Mr. Dunborough grumbled, hesitating, and looking
askance at the attorney--he hated him. 'I can't answer for an hour or
two. I know a place, and I know another place, and there is another
place. And they may be at one or another, or the other. D'you see?'
'I see that it is your business,' Sir George answered with a glance,
before which the other's eyes fell. 'Wait until noon, Mr. Fishwick. If
we have not returned at that hour, be good enough to swear an
information against this gentleman, and set the constables to work.'
Mr. Dunborough muttered that it lay on Sir George's head if ill came of
it; but that said, swung sulkily on his heel. Mr. Fishwick, when the two
were some way down the street, ran after Soane, and asked in a whisper
if his pistols were primed; when he returned satisfied on that point,
the servant, whom he had left at the door of the inn, had vanished. The
lawyer made a shrewd guess that he would have an eye to his master's
safety, and retired into the house with less misgiving.
He got his breakfast early, and afterwards dozed awhile, resting his
aching bones in a corner of the coffee-room. It was nine and after, and
the tide of life was roaring through the channels of the city when he
roused himself, and to divert his suspense and fend off his growing
stiffness went out to look about him. All was new to him, but he soon
wearied of the main streets, where huge drays laden with puncheons of
rum and bales of tobacco threatened to crush him, and tarry seamen,
their whiskers hanging in ringlets, jostled him at every crossing.
Turning aside into a quiet court he stood to stare at a humble wedding
which was leaving a church. He watched the party out of sight, and then,
the church-door standing open, he took the fancy to stroll into the
building. He looked about him at the maze of dusty green-cushioned pews
with little alleys winding hither and thither among them; at the great
three-decker with its huge sounding-board; at the royal escutcheon, and
the faded tables of the law, and was about to leave as aimlessly as he
had entered, when he espied the open vestry door. Popping in his head,
his eye fell on a folio bound in sheepskin, that lay open on a chest, a
pen and ink beside it.
The attorney was in that state of fatigue of body and languor of mind in
which the least trifle amuses. He tip-toed in, his hat in his hand, and
licking his lips as he thought of the law-cases that lay enshrined
between those covers, he perused a couple of entries with a kind of
professional enthusiasm. He was beginning a third, which, being by a
different hand, was a little hard to decipher, when a black gown that
hung on a hook over against him swung noiselessly outward from the wall,
and a little old man emerged from the doorway which it masked.
The lawyer, who was stooping over the register, raised himself
guiltily. 'Hallo!' he said, to cover his confusion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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