THE FIRST AND LAST

"So the last shall be first, and the first last."--HOLY WRIT.


It was a dark room at that hour of six in the evening, when just the
single oil reading-lamp under its green shade let fall a dapple of
light over the Turkey carpet; over the covers of books taken out of the
bookshelves, and the open pages of the one selected; over the deep blue
and gold of the coffee service on the little old stool with its Oriental
embroidery. Very dark in the winter, with drawn curtains, many rows of
leather-bound volumes, oak-panelled walls and ceiling. So large, too,
that the lighted spot before the fire where he sat was just an oasis.
But that was what Keith Darrant liked, after his day's work--the hard
early morning study of his "cases," the fret and strain of the day
in court; it was his rest, these two hours before dinner, with books,
coffee, a pipe, and sometimes a nap. In red Turkish slippers and his
old brown velvet coat, he was well suited to that framing of glow and
darkness. A painter would have seized avidly on his clear-cut, yellowish
face, with its black eyebrows twisting up over eyes--grey or brown, one
could hardly tell, and its dark grizzling hair still plentiful, in spite
of those daily hours of wig. He seldom thought of his work while he
sat there, throwing off with practised ease the strain of that long
attention to the multiple threads of argument and evidence to be
disentangled--work profoundly interesting, as a rule, to his clear
intellect, trained to almost instinctive rejection of all but the
essential, to selection of what was legally vital out of the mass
of confused tactical and human detail presented to his scrutiny; yet
sometimes tedious and wearing. As for instance to-day, when he had