“Why, yes—we will take the Code of Procedure. One can no more move without _that_, just now, than he can travel in some countries without a passport. Yes, put up the code, Jack, and we’ll pick it to pieces as we trot along.” “There is little need of that, sir, if what they say be true. I hear, from all quarters, that it is doing that for itself, on a gallop.” “Shame on thee, lad—I have half a mind to banish thee to Philadelphia! But put up the code; thy joke can’t be worse than that joke. As for Michael, he can accompany us if he wish it; but you must both be ready by ten. At ten, precisely, we quit my door, in the chariot of Phœbus, eh, Ned?” “Call it what you please, so you do but go. Be active, young gentlemen, for we have no time to throw away. The jury meet again at two, and we have several hours of road before us. I will run round and look at my slate, and be here by the time you are ready.” On this suggestion everybody was set in active motion. John went for his books, and to fill a small rubber bag for himself; Michael did the same, and Sarah was busy in her uncle’s room. As for Dunscomb, he made the necessary disposition of some papers, wrote two or three notes, and held himself at the command of his friend. This affair was just the sort of professional business in which he liked to be engaged. Not that he had any sympathy with crime, for he was strongly averse to all communion with rogues; but it appeared to him, by the representations of the doctor, to be a mission of mercy. A solitary, young, unfriended female, accused, or suspected, of a most heinous crime, and looking around for a protector and an adviser, was an object too interesting for a man of his temperament to overlook, under the appeal that had been made. Still he was not the dupe of his feelings. All his coolness, sagacity, knowledge of human nature, and professional attainments, were just as active in him as they ever had been in his life. Two things he understood well: that we are much too often deceived by outward signs, mistaking character by means of a fair exterior, and studied words, and that neither youth, beauty, sex, nor personal graces were infallible preventives of the worst offences, on the one hand; and that, on the other, men nurture distrust, and suspicion, often, until it grows too large to be concealed, by means of their own propensity to feed the imagination and to exaggerate. Against these two weaknesses he was now resolved to arm himself; and when the whole party drove from the door, our counsellor was as clear-headed and impartial, according to his own notion of the matter, as if he were a judge. By this time the young men had obtained a general notion of the business they were on, and the very first subject that was started, on quitting the door, was in a question put by John Wilmeter, in continuation of a discussion that had been commenced between himself and his friend.