"I am a Castlemaine, too, uncle, and can hold my own with the best of them. Nothing will turn me from my course in this matter, save the proofs I have asked for." "Good-morning, Anthony." "Good-day, Uncle Peter." Anthony put on his coat in the hall, and went forth into the street. There he halted; looking this way and that way, as though uncertain of his route. "A few doors on the right hand, on the other side the market-house, John Bent said," he repeated to himself. "Then I must cross the street, and so onwards." He crossed over, went on past the market-house, and looked attentively at the doors on the other side it. On one of those doors was a brass plate: "Mr. Knivett, Attorney-at-law." Anthony Castlemaine rang the bell, asked if the lawyer was at home, and sent in one of his cards. He was shown into a small back room. At a table strewn with papers and pens, sat an elderly man with a bald head, who was evidently regarding the card with the utmost astonishment. He turned his spectacles on Anthony. "Do I see Mr. Knivett, the avoué?" he asked, substituting for once a French term for an English one, perhaps unconsciously. "I am Mr. Knivett, sir, attorney-at-law." In the frank, free way that seemed so especially to characterise him, Anthony Castlemaine put out his hand as to a friend. "You knew my father well, sir. Will you receive his son for old memories' sake?" "Your father?" asked Mr. Knivett, questioningly: but nevertheless meeting the hand with his own, and glancing again at the card. "Basil Castlemaine. He who went away so long ago from Greylands' Rest." "Bless my heart!" cried Mr. Knivett, snatching off his glasses in his surprise. "Basil Castlemaine! I never thought to hear of him again. Why, it must be--ay--since he left, it mast be hard upon five-and-thirty years." "About that, I suppose, sir." "And--is he come back?" Anthony had again to go over the old story. His father's doings abroad and his father's death, and his father's charge to him to come home and claim his paternal inheritance: he rehearsed it all. Mr. Knivett, who was very considerably past sixty, and had put his spectacles on again, never ceased gazing at the relator, as they sat nearly knee to knee. Not for a moment did any doubt occur to him that the young man was other than he represented himself to be: the face was the face of a Castlemaine, and of a truthful gentleman. "But I have come to you, not only to show myself to a friend of my poor father's in his youth, but also as a client," proceeded Anthony, after a short while. "I have need of a lawyer's advice, sir; which I am prepared to pay for according to the charges of the English country. Will you advise me?" "To be sure," replied Mr. Knivett. "What advice is it that you want?" "First of all, sir--In the days when my father was at home, you were the solicitor to my grandfather, old Anthony Castlemaine. Did you continue to be so until his death?" "I did."