e it
when a child, and now that he was a man, hers was the dearest name he
knew. He loved her as his mother, and she loved him as her son. But any
woman might have loved him. His straight, closely-knit, sinewy frame,
dark, deep-set eyes, and broad, open forehead, overhung with thick,
brown hair, were only the outshadowing of a beautiful mind, of an open,
upright, manly nature, whose firm and steady integrity nothing could
shake.

'I'm sorry to hear it,' I replied; 'but go down and see her, while I
speak to Mr. Hallet.'

Rapping at the door of an inner office, separated from the outer one by
a ground-glass partition, I was admitted by a tall, dark man, who, with
a stiff and slightly embarrassed manner, said to me:

'I am glad to see you, Mr. Kirke. Pray, be seated.'

As he pointed to a chair, a shorter and younger gentleman, who was
writing at another desk, rose, and slapping me familiarly on the back,
exclaimed:

'My dear fellow, how are you?'

'Very well, Cragin, how are you?'

'Good as new--never better in my life--how goes the world with you?'

The last speaker was not more than thirty-three, but a bald spot on the
top of his head, and a slight falling-in of his mouth, caused by
premature decay of the teeth, made him seem several years older. He had
marked but not regular features, and a restless, dark eye, which opened
and shut with a peculiar wink that kept time with the motion of his lips
in speaking. His clothes were cut in a loose, jaunty style, and his
manner, though brusque and abrupt, betokened, like his face, a free,
frank, manly character. He was ten or twelve years the junior of the
other, and as unlike him as one man can be unlike another.

The older gentleman, as I have said, was tall and dark. He had a high,
bold forehead, and wore heavy gray whiskers, trimmed with the utmost
nicety, and meeting under a sharp, narrow chin. His face was large and
full, and his nose pointed and prominent, but his mouth was small, and
gathered in at the corners like a rat's; and, as if to add to the
rat-resemblance, its small, white teeth seemed borrowed from the jaws of
that animal. There was a stately precision in his manner, and a stealthy
softness in his tread, that would have impressed a stranger unfavorably;
but _I_ knew him. We had been boys together, and he loved me as he loved
his own son. How well he loved _him_, the reader will learn, if he
follows the course of my story.

These two gentlemen--Mr. H