ster were the popular lawyers of Milby and its
neighbourhood, and Mr. Benjamin Landor, whom no one had anything
particular to say against, had a very meagre business in comparison.
Hardly a landholder, hardly a farmer, hardly a parish within ten miles of
Milby, whose affairs were not under the legal guardianship of Pittman and
Dempster; and I think the clients were proud of their lawyers'
unscrupulousness, as the patrons of the fancy's are proud of their
champion's 'condition'. It was not, to be sure, the thing for ordinary
life, but it was the thing to be bet on in a lawyer. Dempster's talent in
'bringing through' a client was a very common topic of conversation with
the farmers, over an incidental glass of grog at the Red Lion. 'He's a
long-headed feller, Dempster; why, it shows yer what a headpiece Dempster
has, as he can drink a bottle o' brandy at a sittin', an' yit see further
through a stone wall when he's done, than other folks 'll see through a
glass winder.' Even Mr. Jerome, chief member of the congregation at Salem
Chapel, an elderly man of very strict life, was one of Dempster's
clients, and had quite an exceptional indulgence for his attorney's
foibles, perhaps attributing them to the inevitable incompatibility of
law and gospel.

The standard of morality at Milby, you perceive, was not inconveniently
high in those good old times, and an ingenuous vice or two was what every
man expected of his neighbour. Old Mr. Crewe, the curate, for example,
was allowed to enjoy his avarice in comfort, without fear of sarcastic
parish demagogues; and his flock liked him all the better for having
scraped together a large fortune out of his school and curacy, and the
proceeds of the three thousand pounds he had with his little deaf wife.
It was clear he must be a learned man, for he had once had a large
private school in connection with the grammar school, and had even
numbered a young nobleman or two among his pupils. The fact that he read
nothing at all now, and that his mind seemed absorbed in the commonest
matters, was doubtless due to his having exhausted the resources of
erudition earlier in life. It is true he was not spoken of in terms of
high respect, and old Crewe's stingy housekeeping was a frequent subject
of jesting; but this was a good old-fashioned characteristic in a parson
who had been part of Milby life for half a century: it was like the dents
and disfigurements in an old family tankard, which no one would