He had just one acquaintance in the whole mighty city, and no more. Him he had known in the days of his sojourn at King’s College, where he had grown with him from bejan to magistrand. He was the son of a linen draper in Aberdeen, and was a decent, good humoured fellow, who, if he had not distinguished, had never disgraced himself. His father, having somewhat influential business relations, and finding in him no leanings to a profession, bespoke the good offices of a certain large retail house in London, and sent him thither to learn the business. The result was that he had married a daughter of one of the partners, and become a partner himself. His old friend wrote to him at his shop in Oxford Street, and then went to see him at his house in Haverstock Hill. He was shown into the library--in which were two mahogany cases with plate-glass doors, full of books, well cared for as to clothing and condition, and perfectly placid, as if never disturbed from one week’s end to another. In a minute Mr Marshal entered--so changed that he could never have recognized him--still, however, a kind-hearted, genial man. He received his classfellow cordially and respectfully--referred merrily to old times, and begged to know how he was getting on, asked whether he had come to London with any special object, and invited him to dine with them on Sunday. He accepted the invitation, met him, according to agreement, at a certain chapel in Kentish Town, of which he was a deacon, and walked home with him and his wife. They had but one of their family at home--the youngest son, whom his father was having educated for the dissenting ministry, in the full conviction that he was doing not a little for the truth, and justifying its cause before men, by devoting to its service the son of a man of standing and worldly means, whom he might have easily placed in a position to make money. The youth was of simple character and good inclination--ready to do what he saw to be right, but slow in putting to the question anything that interfered with his notions of laudable ambition, or justifiable self-interest. He was attending lectures at a dissenting college in the neighbourhood, for his father feared Oxford or Cambridge, not for his morals, but his opinions in regard to church and state. The schoolmaster spent a few days in the house. His friend was generally in town, and his wife, regarding him as very primitive and hardly fit for what she counted society--the class, namely, that she herself represented, was patronising and condescending; but the young fellow, finding, to his surprise, that he knew a great deal more about his studies than he did himself, was first somewhat attracted and then somewhat influenced by him, so that at length an intimacy tending to friendship arose between them.