He was no longer any master’s man. He could, if he liked, set up for himself. The firm for which he had worked all these years had, indeed, a high opinion of his powers; and they did not wish to lose him wholly. Mr. Breese, the head-partner, “a kind master and a thorough man,” as David described him in his diary, had died in 1881; but the other partners did their best to give him a start. They secured him an offer of a managing clerkship in an old county firm at Dolgelly. It would have been a most attractive opening for a man who wished to follow the safe course in life. But David Lloyd George was one who preferred risks. He wished to be the ruler of his own fate. He had now practically no one behind him. The long period of examination and apprenticeship had exhausted the slender stores of his mother and his uncle. He had even to wait for his first cases before he could purchase the robes required of a Welsh solicitor before he could plead in the County Court. But he still preferred a small independence to a big dependence. Perhaps he was right. Probably he had ideas as to the way of conducting a legal business which would not have always gratified any old-fashioned firm of country solicitors. The young solicitor started quite simply by putting a brass name-plate on the door of Morvin House, their little dwelling at Criccieth. He then began to practise in his uncle’s back parlour. It was a daring venture for an unknown village youth; but after a few months he began to get under way. His diaries of 1885 punctuate with thrilling eagerness the opening steps in his professional career—his first case in the Police Court, his first service of an order, his first plea in the County Court. On June 24th he records with glee that he won all his cases. “Never had a more successful field-day.” On July 9th he is attending Penrhyn Sessions for the first time, opposing the transfer of a license. On September 8th he is in the Revision Courts. “Came off better than Liberals ever did.” In fact, he marches in these first skirmishes from victory to victory. So successful was he, in fact, that in this year (1885) he opened an office in the High Street at Portmadoc, not far from the building in which he had been articled. He began in a very small house, and remained there for some years before moving to the corner house where the legend “Messrs. Lloyd George and George” is still prominent in the window. This corner house was previously a public-house known as “The Fox Inn.” There the brothers—for now William had joined David in practice—took the end of the lease, and finally secured the freehold. There, in that dispossessed hostelry, William George practises to-day (1920).