important and profitable feature in some of their fields, as in
fields of greater renown; and in most of the Actions wherein they
showed their generalship, it was afterwards observed by the
combatants that they had had great difficulty in making each other
out, or in knowing with any degree of distinctness what they were
about, in consequence of the vast amount of smoke by which they
were surrounded.

The offices of Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs stood convenient, with
an open door down two smooth steps, in the market-place; so that
any angry farmer inclining towards hot water, might tumble into it
at once. Their special council-chamber and hall of conference was
an old back-room up-stairs, with a low dark ceiling, which seemed
to be knitting its brows gloomily in the consideration of tangled
points of law. It was furnished with some high-backed leathern
chairs, garnished with great goggle-eyed brass nails, of which,
every here and there, two or three had fallen out - or had been
picked out, perhaps, by the wandering thumbs and forefingers of
bewildered clients. There was a framed print of a great judge in
it, every curl in whose dreadful wig had made a man's hair stand on
end. Bales of papers filled the dusty closets, shelves, and
tables; and round the wainscot there were tiers of boxes, padlocked
and fireproof, with people's names painted outside, which anxious
visitors felt themselves, by a cruel enchantment, obliged to spell
backwards and forwards, and to make anagrams of, while they sat,
seeming to listen to Snitchey and Craggs, without comprehending one
word of what they said.

Snitchey and Craggs had each, in private life as in professional
existence, a partner of his own. Snitchey and Craggs were the best