Mr Brown’s house was an old house in the middle of the town. The offices were in the lower floor, occupying one side of the building. On the other side of the wide old-fashioned hall was his dining-room. There he sat all by himself upon this agitating night. It was a large, lofty, barely-furnished room, with wainscoted walls, and curious stiff panelling, and a high mantel-shelf which he, though a tall man, could scarcely reach with his arm. It was dimly lighted, as well as barely furnished--altogether an inhuman, desert place--the poorest though the grandest of all we have yet looked into in Carlingford. Mr Brown was not sensible of its inhospitable aspect; he was used to it, and that was enough. It occurred to him as little to criticise his house as to criticise his manners. Thus they _were_, and thus they would continue; at least he had always believed so till to-night. He sat in his easy-chair with his feet on the fender, and a little table at his elbow with his wine. As long as there was anything in his glass he sipped it by habit, without being aware of what he was doing; but when the glass was empty, though he had two or three times raised it empty to his lips, he was too much absorbed in his thoughts to replenish it. He was not by any means a handsome man; and he was five-and-forty or thereabouts, and had a habit of making portentous faces, when anyway specially engaged in thought; so that, on the whole, it was not a highly attractive or interesting figure which reclined back in the crimson chair, and stretched its slippered feet to the fire, sole inmate of the dim, spacious, vacant room. He was thinking over his new position with profound disgust and perplexity. Nevertheless it cannot be denied that the subject lured him on, and drew out into stretches of imagination far beyond his wont;--hunting all the world over after Phœbe Thomson! But, after all, that was only a preliminary step; he was required only to use reasonable means, and for three years. If she turned up, there was an end of it; if she did not turn up---- Here Mr Brown sprang up hurriedly and assumed the favourite position of Englishmen in front of his fire. There, all glittering in the distance, rose up, solid and splendid, an appearance which few men could see without emotion--twenty thousand pounds! It was not life and death to him, as it was to poor Mrs Christian. It did not make all the difference between sordid want and comfortable existence; but you may well believe it did not appear before the lawyer’s eyes without moving him into a considerable degree of excitement. Such a fairy apparition had never appeared before in that cold, spacious, uninhabited room. Involuntarily to himself, Mr Brown saw his house expand, his life open out, his condition change. Roseate lights dropped into the warming atmosphere which had received that vision; the fairy wand waved through the dim air before him in spite of all his sobriety. The wiles of the enchantress lured John Brown as