he had his own plans for making a fortune, and hoped to win for himself
a larger fortune than is, often made in the law. He was a hunter of
genealogies, a grubber-up of forgotten facts, a joiner of broken links,
a kind of legal resurrectionist, a digger in the dust and ashes of the
past; and he expected in due time to dig up a treasure rich enough to
reward the labour and patience of half a lifetime.

"I can afford to wait till I'm forty for my good luck," he said to his
brother sometimes in moments of expansion; "and then I shall have ten
years in which to enjoy myself, and twenty more in which I shall have
life enough left to eat good dinners and drink good wine, and grumble
about the degeneracy of things in general, after the manner of elderly
human nature."

The men stood one on each side of the hearth; George looking at his
brother, Philip looking down at the fire, with his eyes shaded by their
thick black lashes. The fire had become dull and hollow. George bent
down presently and stirred the coals impatiently.

"If there's one thing I hate more than, another--and I hate a good many
things--it's a bad fire," he said. "How's Barlingford--lively as ever,
I suppose?"

"Not much livelier than it was when we left it. Things have gone amiss
with me in London, and I've been more than once sorely tempted to make
an end of my difficulties with a razor or a few drops of prussic acid;
but when I saw the dull gray streets and the square gray houses, and
the empty market-place, and the Baptist chapel, and the Unitarian
chapel, and the big stony church, and heard the dreary bells
ding-donging for evening service, I wondered how I could ever have