At half-past 8, A. M., of a fine morning, late in May, when the roses were beginning to show their tints amid the verdure of the leaves, in Mr. Dunscomb’s yard, the three individuals just mentioned were at the breakfast-table of what it is the fashion of New York to term a dining-room. The windows were open, and a soft and fragrant air filled the apartment. We have said that Mr. Dunscomb was affluent, and he chose to enjoy his means, not à la Manhattan, in idle competition with the _nouveaux riches_, but in a more quiet and rational way. His father had occupied lots, ‘running through,’ as it is termed; building his house on one street and his stables on the other; leaving himself a space in the rear of the former, that was prodigious for a town so squeezed into parallelograms of twenty-five feet by a hundred. This open space was of the usual breadth, but it actually measured a hundred and fifty feet in length, an area that would have almost justified its being termed a ‘park,’ in the nomenclature of the town. This yard Sarah had caused to be well garnished with shrubbery, and, for its dimensions, it was really a sort of oasis, in that wilderness of bricks. The family was not alone that morning. A certain Michael Millington was a guest of Jack’s, and seemingly quite at home in the little circle. The business of eating and drinking was pretty well through with, though each of the four cups had its remains of tea or coffee, and Sarah sat stirring hers idly, while her soft eyes were turned with interest on the countenances of the two young men. The last had a sheet of writing-paper lying between them, and their heads were close together, as both studied that which was written on it in pencil. As for Mr. Dunscomb, himself, he was fairly surrounded by documents of one sort and another. Two or three of the morning papers, glanced at but not read, lay opened on the floor; on each side of his plate was a brief, or some lease or release; while a copy of the new and much talked of code was in his hand. As we say in our American English, Mr. Dunscomb was ‘emphatically’ a common-law lawyer; and, as our transatlantic brethren would remark in their sometime cockney dialect, he was not at all ‘agreeable’ to this great innovation on ‘the perfection of human reason.’ He muttered occasionally as he read, and now and then he laid down the book, and seemed to muse. All this, however, was quite lost on Sarah, whose soft blue eyes still rested on the interested countenances of the two young men. At length Jack seized the paper, and wrote a line or two hurriedly, with his pencil. “There, Mike,” he said, in a tone of self-gratulation, “I think _that_ will do!” “It has one merit of a good toast,” answered the friend, a little doubtingly; “it is sententious.”