in modern practice, and intending to make that my particular branch of
effort, I spent much of my time at the Public Record Office; indeed, a
portion of every working day. The track between R---- Buildings and
Rolls Yard must have been sensibly thinned by my foot-soles; there
can have been few of the frequenters of Chancery Lane, Bedford Row and
the squares of Gray's Inn who were not known to me by sight or
concerning whom I had not imagined (or discerned) circumstances
invisible to their friends or themselves to account for their acts or
appearances. Among these innumerable personages--portly solicitors,
dashing clerks, scriveners, racing tipsters, match-sellers, postmen,
young ladies of business, young ladies of pleasure, clients descending
out of broughams, clients keeping rendezvous in public-houses, and
what not--Quidnunc's may well have been one; but I believe that it was
in Warwick Court (that passage from Holborn into the Inn) that, quite
suddenly, I first saw him, or became aware that I saw him; for being,
as he was, to all appearance an ordinary telegraphic messenger, I may
have passed him daily for a year without any kind of notice. But on a
day in the early spring of 1886--mid-April at a guess--I came upon him
in such a way as to remark him incurably. I saw before me on that
morning of tender leafage, of pale sunlight and blue mist contending
for the day, a strangely assorted pair proceeding slowly toward the
Inn. A telegraph boy was one; by his side walked, vehemently
explaining, a tall, elderly solicitor--white-whiskered, drab-spatted,
frock-coated, eye-glassed, silk-hatted--in every detail the trusted
family lawyer. I knew the man by sight, and I knew him by name and
repute. He was, let me say--for I withhold his real name--George
Lumley Fowkes, of Fowkes, Vizard and Fowkes, respectable head of a
more than respectable firm; and here he was, with his hat pushed back
from his dewy forehead, tip-toeing, protesting, extenuating to a slip
of a lad in uniform. The positions of the odd pair were unaccountably