THE LAWYER AND THE BODY-SNATCHER.

That same evening Beck, according to appointment, met Percival and showed
him the dreary-looking house which held the fair stranger who had so
attracted his youthful fancy. And Percival looked at the high walls with
the sailor's bold desire for adventure, while confused visions reflected
from plays, operas, and novels, in which scaling walls with rope-ladders
and dark-lanterns was represented as the natural vocation of a lover,
flitted across his brain; and certainly he gave a deep sigh as his
common-sense plucked him back from such romance. However, having now
ascertained the house, it would be easy to learn the name of its inmates,
and to watch or make his opportunity. As slowly and reluctantly he
walked back to the spot where he had left his cabriolet, he entered into
some desultory conversation with his strange guide; and the pity he had
before conceived for Beck increased upon him as he talked and listened.
This benighted mind, only illumined by a kind of miserable astuteness and
that "cunning of the belly" which is born of want to engender avarice;
this joyless temperament; this age in youth; this living reproach, rising
up from the stones of London against our social indifference to the souls
which wither and rot under the hard eyes of science and the deaf ears of
wealth,--had a pathos for his lively sympathies and his fresh heart.

"If ever you want a friend, come to me," said St. John, abruptly.

The sweeper stared, and a gleam of diviner nature, a ray of gratitude and
unselfish devotion, darted through the fog and darkness of his mind. He
stood, with his hat off, watching the wheels of the cabriolet as it bore
away the happy child of fortune, and then, shaking his head, as at some
puzzle that perplexed and defied his comprehension, strode back to the
town and bent his way homeward.