f the term. After a short interval spent in the
society of a coach, he entered a fast College at one of our ancient
Universities, and, being possessed of a fairly comfortable allowance,
soon distinguished himself by the calculating ardour with which he
affected the acquaintance of young men of rank, and shared in the
fashionable pleasures of the place. Recognising that amidst the careless
and easy-going generosity of undergraduate society, he who has a cool
and scheming head is usually able to tip the balance of good luck in his
own favour, he lost no opportunity of ingratiating himself with those
who might be of service to him. He cultivated a fluent style of
platitudes and claptrap at his college debating society, and at the
Union, to the committee of which he was elected after prolonged and
assiduous canvassing. Having managed to be proctorised in company with
the eldest son of a peer, whom he delighted by the studied impertinence
of his answers to the Proctor, he eventually went down with a pass
degree and a mixed reputation, and, after the orthodox number of
dinners, and the regulation examination, had the satisfaction of seeing
his name published in the list of those who, having acquired a
smattering of Roman and English law, were entitled, for a consideration,
to aid litigants with their counsel.

For the next few years little was heard of him. He read in chambers,
drew pleadings and indictments, and gathered many useful tricks from the
criminal advocate to whom he attached himself like a leech. During this
period he also made the acquaintance of a Solicitor who had retired from
the noon-day glare of professional rectitude to the congenial atmosphere
of shady cases. He also struck up a friendship with two or three
struggling journalists, who were occupied in hanging on to the
paragraphic fringe of their profession, and who might be trusted
afterwards to lend a hand to an intimate engaged in a similar, but not
identical line of business. Helped by a shrewd, and not over-scrupulous
clerk, he gradually picked up a practice, a thing mainly of shreds and
patches, but still a practice of a sort. At the Middlesex Sessions, and
at the Central Criminal Court, his name began to be mentioned; and in a
certain money-lending case it was acknowledged that his astuteness had
prevented the exposure of his client from being as crushing and complete
as the rate of per-centage had seemed to warrant.

Soon afterwards, one of his ri