“In, but engaged in a consultation, I believe,” answered one who, being paid for his services, was the working clerk of the office; most of the others being students who get no remuneration for their time, and who very rarely deserve it. “I’ll wait till he is through,” returned the stranger, helping himself coolly to a vacant chair, and taking his seat in the midst of dangers that might have alarmed one less familiar with the snares, and quirks, and quiddities of the law. The several clerks, after taking a good look each at their guest, cast their eyes down on their books or foolscap, and seemed to be engrossed with their respective occupations. Most of the young men, members of respectable families in town, set the stranger down for a rustic client; but the working-clerk saw at once, by a certain self-possessed and shrewd manner, that the stranger was a country practitioner. In the course of the next half hour, Daniel Lord and George Wood came out of the sanctum, attended as far as the door by Dunscomb himself. Exchanging “good morning” with his professional friends, the last caught a glimpse of his patient visitor, whom he immediately saluted by the somewhat brief and familiar name of Timms, inviting him instantly, and with earnestness, to come within the limits of the privileged. Mr. Timms complied, entering the _sanctum_ with the air of one who had been there before, and appearing to be in no manner overcome by the honour he enjoyed. And now, as a faithful chronicler of events, it is here become our painful, not to say revolting duty, to record an act on the part of the man who was known throughout Duke’s county as ’Squire Timms, which it will never do to overlook, since it has got to be perfectly distinctive and characteristic of late years, not of an individual, but of large classes who throng the bar, the desk, the steamboats, the taverns, the streets. A thousand paragraphs have been written on the subject of American spitting, and not one line, as we can remember, on the subject of an equally common and still grosser offence against the minor morals of the country, if decency in manners may be thus termed. Our meaning will be explained more fully in the narrative of the stranger’s immediate movements on entering the sanctum. “Take a seat, Mr. Timms,” said Dunscomb, motioning to a chair, while he resumed his own well-cushioned seat, and deliberately proceeded to light a segar, not without pressing several with a species of intelligent tenderness, between his thumb and finger. “Take a seat, sir; and take a segar.”