There is light and life down this way; a light in the window of the wretched house occupied by Mr. Tug Whittle, and all the neighboring buildings are alive with rats and vermin. Tug occupies his house for the same reason that the rats occupy theirs, for in this quarter of the town the tenants pay no rent. Some of the buildings were once busy warehouses and stores, but they have been turned over to the rats these ten years, and Tug occupies a little frame one from choice, as he argues that if it falls down from old age, there will not be so many ruins in which to bury the tenants. Besides, the big buildings shelter him from the cold north winds in winter, and do not interfere with the southern breezes from the river in summer; therefore the faded sign of "T. Whittle, Law Office," swings in front of the little frame building back from the street, instead of from the more imposing ones by its side. Everybody knows Tug Whittle, and admits that he is perfectly harmless and hopelessly lazy--always excepting Silas Davy, who believes that his friend is very energetic and dangerous; therefore when Silas is unable to hold a position because he is a good fellow, or because he spends so much time at night with Tug that he is unfit for work during the day, he is also an inhabitant of the little law office, along with the lawyer and the rats, although it is not much of a law office, for it contains nothing but a stove, half cooking and half heating, a bed that looks as though it came from the fourth story of a cheap hotel, a few broken chairs, a box that is the lawyer's table, and a few other articles common to a kitchen, all of them second-hand, and very poor. There is nothing about the place to suggest a law office save the sign in front, and a single leather-covered book on the inside; a ponderous volume to which Mr. Whittle applies for everything, including kindling. Silas has seen him look through it to decide questions in science, theology, law, and history, and tear leaves out of it with which to start his fire; and while a cunning man would have guessed that Mr. Whittle made up his authority, instead of finding it in the book, Silas Davy, who is not cunning, believes that it is a repository of secrets of every kind, although it is really a treatise on a law which has been repealed many years. When Silas so far forgets himself as to mildly question something his companion has said, Mr. Whittle refers to the book, and triumphantly proves his position, no difference what it may be; whereupon the little man feels much humiliated. Mr. Whittle has even been known to refer to the book to convict his enemies in Davy's Bend of various offences; and Silas has so much respect for the volume that he has no trouble in imagining that the den in which Tug lives is not only a law office, but a repository of profane, political, and sacred history, to say nothing of the sciences and the town scandal.