"She's just the woman for a lawyer's wife," thought Nehemiah, as he talked. "I'll practise my speeches on her." "But, after all, it's no use wearying you with all these details, Miss Tinker. We shall never reach a final trial. Your uncle isn't the man to take a beating, and if we're trounced in one Court we shall go to another. Pinder can't stand the racket. I call it downright dishonest of him taking the savings of those deluded Co-opers, as they call them, and spending it on Sykes. Of course it's all the better for me. But the whole thing'll fizzle out in the Bankruptcy Court, and I take it there'll be no necessity to wait for the Court of Chancery's decision. Want of shekels will decide the question before we're much older, mark my words." "How very charming!" quoth Dorothy. "Really, Mr. Wimpenny, I don't know how to thank you for making everything so clear to me. Now these water-foulings by Mr. Pinder, I suppose anyone can see them? You've interested me so much I've a good notion to turn myself into an amateur expert; if that isn't a contradiction in terms." "Not more anomalous than a woman with sense," reflected Nehemiah. But he said with something of an effort. "Well, the fact is Miss Tinker, there isn't very much to see. It's the eye of science, don'tcherknow, that we go by in these cases. The eye of science," he repeated, evidently pleased with that phrase. "Well, anyway, I'll try what the eye of a woman can see some fine day. Perhaps I may find out something that has escaped all you clever men, and then you'll have to take me up to London as a witness, I hope." It was, perhaps, in pursuance of this quite commendable resolve, that Dorothy one bright, cloudless day in August, clad in a close-fitting costume that permitted the graceful movement of her limbs without concealing the charming lines of her form came suddenly upon Tom Pinder in the neighbourhood of the Isle of Skye. Dorothy, who had, as far as the nature of the ground permitted, followed the course of the stream as it flowed from its source down the valley, was warm and flushed from the toilsome ascent, but the glow of health was on her cheek and its sparkle in her eye. Tom, on the contrary, was pale and careworn. Too sedulous devotion to his necessary work, too little rest of mind and body, but above all the constant anxiety and uncertainty for the future were telling their tale upon his robust, vigorous, elastic frame. But a glad light sprang to his eyes, and a happy smile to his lips as he met Dorothy's outstretched hand. "You are quite a stranger, Mr. Pinder; it is ages since I caught more than a glimpse of you. Betty is quite fretting that you never go to see her now. Vows she is wearing to skin and bone; but it must be by the eye of faith she attests the process."