could see but one alternative left to him. He took up his pen, and wrote
to his friend at the Government office. There was nothing for it now but
to run the risk, and try Old Sharon.




CHAPTER IX.

THE next day, Mr. Troy (taking Robert Moody with him as a valuable
witness) rang the bell at the mean and dirty lodging-house in which Old
Sharon received the clients who stood in need of his advice.

They were led up stairs to a back room on the second floor of the house.
Entering the room, they discovered through a thick cloud of tobacco
smoke, a small, fat, bald-headed, dirty, old man, in an arm-chair, robed
in a tattered flannel dressing-gown, with a short pipe in his mouth, a
pug-dog on his lap, and a French novel in his hands.

"Is it business?" asked Old Sharon, speaking in a hoarse, asthmatical
voice, and fixing a pair of bright, shameless, black eyes attentively on
the two visitors.

"It _is_ business," Mr. Troy answered, looking at the old rogue who had
disgraced an honorable profession, as he might have looked at a reptile
which had just risen rampant at his feet. "What is your fee for a
consultation?"

"You give me a guinea, and I'll give you half an hour." With this reply
Old Sharon held out his unwashed hand across the rickety ink-splashed