Perhaps there was not a single member of the profession present that night in the two little parlours of Mrs. Horton, who recognized the latter of these rules; or who did not, at need, practise on the former. As has been already said, these were the rowdies of the Duke’s county bar. They chewed, smoked, drank, and played, each and all coarsely. To things that were innocent in themselves they gave the aspect of guilt by their own manners. The doors were kept locked; even amid their coarsest jokes, their ribaldry, their oaths that were often revolting and painfully frequent, there was an uneasy watchfulness, as if they feared detection. There was nothing frank and manly in the deportment of these men. Chicanery, management, double-dealing, mixed up with the outbreakings of a coarse standard of manners, were visible in all they said or did, except, perhaps, at those moments when hypocrisy was paying its homage to virtue. This hypocrisy, however, had little, or at most a very indirect connection with anything religious. The offensive offshoots of the exaggerations that were so abounding among us half a century since, are giving place to hypocrisy of another school. The homage that was then paid to principles, however erroneous and forbidding, is now paid to the ballot-boxes. There was scarcely an individual around those card-tables, at which the play was so obviously for the stakes as to render the whole scene revolting, who would not have shrunk from having his amusements known. It would seem as if conscience consulted taste. Everything was coarse and offensive; the attitudes, oaths, conversation, liquors, and even the manner of drinking them. Apart from the dialogue, little was absolutely done that might not have been made to lose most of its repulsiveness, by adopting a higher school of manners; but of this these scions of a noble stock knew no more than they did of the parent stem. It is scarcely necessary to say that both Williams and Timms were of this party. The relaxation was, in fact, in conformity with their tastes and practices; and each of these excrescences of a rich and beneficent soil counted on the meetings in Mrs. Horton’s private rooms, as the more refined seek pleasure in the exercise of their tastes and habits. “I say, Timms,” bawled out an attorney of the name of Crooks—“You play’d a trump, sir—all right—go ahead—first rate—good play, that—ours dead. I say, Timms, you’re going to save Mary Monson’s neck. When I came here, I thought she was a case; but the prosecution is making out miserably.” “What do you say to that, Williams?” put in Crooks’s partner, who was smoking, playing, and drinking, with occasional ‘asides’ of swearing, all, as might be, at the same time. “I trump that, sir, by your leave—what do you say to that, Williams?” “I say that this is not the court; and trying such a cause once ought to satisfy a reasonable man.”