"Why, yes; as far as my vocation will permit. I am, as Hamlet says, indifferent honest, when my clients and their solicitors do not make me the medium of conveying their double-distilled lies to the bench. But oportet vivere! it is a sad thing.--And now to our business. I am glad my old friend MacMorlan has sent you to me;he is an active, honest, and intelligent man, long Sheriff-substitute of the county of--under me, and still holds the office. He knows I have a regard for that unfortunate family of Ellangowan, and for poor Lucy. I have not seen her since she was twelve years old, and she was then a sweet pretty girl under the management of a very silly father. But my interest in her is of an early date. I was called upon, Mr. Mannering, being then Sheriff of that county, to investigate the particulars of a murder which had been committed near Ellangowan the day on which this poor child was born; and which, by a strange combination that I was unhappily not able to trace, involved the death or abstraction of her only brother, a boy of about five years old. No, Colonel, I shall never forget the misery of the house of Ellangowan that morning!--the father half distracted--the mother dead in premature travail--the helpless infant, with scarce any one to attend it, coming wawling and crying into this miserable world at such a moment of unutterable misery. We lawyers are not of iron, sir, or of brass, any more than you soldiers are of steel. We are conversant with the crimes and distresses of civil society, as you are with those that occur in a state of war, and to do our duty in either case a little apathy is perhaps necessary--But the devil take a soldier whose heart can be as hard as his sword, and his dam catch the lawyer who bronzes his bosom instead of his forehead!--But come, Iam losing my Saturday at e'en--will you have the kindness to trust me with these papers which relate to Miss Bertram's business? --and stay--to-morrow you'll take a bachelor's dinner with an old lawyer,--I insist upon it, at three precisely--and come an hour sooner.--The old lady is to be buried on Monday; it is the orphan's cause, and we'll borrow an hour from the Sunday to talk over this business--although I fear nothing can be done if she has altered her settlement--unless perhaps it occurs within the sixty days, and then if Miss Bertram can show that she possesses the character of heir-at-law, why--"But, hark! my lieges are impatient of their inter-regnum--I do not invite you to rejoin us, Colonel; it would be a trespass on your complaisance, unless you had begun the day with us, and gradually glided on front wisdom to mirth, and from mirth to--to--to--extravagance.--Good-night-Harry, go home with Mr.
Mannering to his lodging-Colonel, I expect you at a little past two to-morrow."The Colonel returned to his inn, equally surprised at the childish frolics in which he had found his learned counsellor engaged, at the candour and sound sense which he had in a moment summoned up to meet the exigencies of his profession, and at the tone of feeling which he displayed when he spoke of the friendless orphan.
