reason for it, any more than any of us can for half of what we do.

"I should like to examine that conveyance we were speaking of once more,"
said he. "Please to look at this one in the mean time, will you, Mr.
Penhallow?"

Master Gridley held the document up before him. He did not seem to find
it quite legible, and adjusted his spectacles carefully, until they were
just as he wanted them. When he had got them to suit himself, sitting
there with his back to Murray Bradshaw, he could see him and all his
movements, the desk at which he was standing, and the books in the
shelves before him,--all this time appearing as if he were intent upon
his own reading.

The young man began in a rather indifferent way to look over the papers.
He loosened the band round them, and took them up one by one, gave a
careless glance at them, and laid them together to tie up again when he
had gone through them. Master Gridley saw all this process, thinking
what a fool he was all the time to be watching such a simple proceeding.
Presently he noticed a more sudden movement: the young man had found
something which arrested his attention, and turned his head to see if he
was observed. The senior partner and his client were both apparently
deep in their own affairs. In his hand Mr. Bradshaw held a paper folded
like the others, the back of which he read, holding it in such a way that
Master Gridley saw very distinctly three large spots of ink upon it, and
noticed their position. Murray Bradshaw took another hurried glance at
the two gentlemen, and then quickly opened the paper. He ran it over
with a flash of his eye, folded it again, and laid it by itself. With
another quick turn of his head, as if to see whether he were observed or
like to be, he reached his hand out and took a volume down from the