ergeant, having altogether forgotten his
most important engagement for the day, received his clients in chambers
after his usual practice, and remained busy with professional cares
until a band of devoted friends forcibly carried him to the church,
where his bride had been waiting for him more than an hour. The ceremony
having been duly performed, he hastened back to his chambers, to be
present at a consultation. Notwithstanding her sincere affection for
him, the lady proved but an indifferent wife to the black-letter lawyer.
Empowered by Act of Parliament to retain her maiden-name after
marriage, she showed her disesteem for her husband's patronymic by her
mode of exercising the privilege secured to her by special law; and many
a time the sergeant indignantly insisted that she should use his name in
her signatures. "My name is Hill, madam; my father's name was Hill,
madam; all the Hills have been named Hill, madam; Hill is a good
name--and by ----, madam, you _shall_ use it." On other matters he was
more compliant--humoring her old-maidish fancies in a most docile and
conciliating manner. Curiously neat and orderly, Mrs. Medlycott took
great pride in the faultlessness of her domestic arrangements, so far as
cleanliness and precise order were concerned. To maintain the whiteness
of the pipe-clayed steps before the front door of her Bedford Square
mansion was a chief object of her existence; and to gratify her in this
particular, Sergeant Hill use daily to leave his premises by the kitchen
steps. Having outlived the lady, Hill observed to a friend who was
condoling with him on his recent bereavement, "Ay, my poor wife is gone!
She was a good sort of woman--in _her_ way a _very_ good sort of woman.
I do honestly declare my belief that in _her_ way she had no equal.
But--but--I'll tell you something in confidence. If ever I marry again,
_I won't marry merely for money_." The learned sergeant died in his
ninety-third year without having made a second marriage.

Like Harcourt, John Scott married under circumstances that called forth
many warm expressions of censure; and like Harcourt, he, in after life,
reflected on his imprudent marriage as one of the most fortunate steps
of his earlier career. The romance of the law contains few more pleasant
episodes than the story of handsome Jack Scott's elopement with Bessie
Surtees. There is no need to tell in detail how the comely Oxford
scholar danced with the banker's daughter at th