efore Tuesday. Many a good speech has been made for a
beast of a client; and hark ye, lad, hark ye--I never intended to cheat
you of your fee when all was done, though I would have liked to have
heard the speech first; but there is nothing like corning the horse
before the journey. Here are five goud guineas in a silk purse--of your
poor mother's netting, Alan--she would have been a blithe woman to have
seen her young son with a gown on his back--but no more of that--be a
good boy, and to the work like a tiger.'

I did set to work, Darsie; for who could resist such motives? With my
father's assistance, I have mastered the details, confused as they are;
and on Tuesday I shall plead as well for Peter Peebles as I could for
a duke. Indeed, I feel my head so clear on the subject as to be able
to write this long letter to you; into which, however, Peter and his
lawsuit have insinuated themselves so far as to show you how much they
at present occupy my thoughts. Once more, be careful of yourself, and
mindful of me, who am ever thine, while ALAN FAIRFORD.

From circumstances, to be hereafter mentioned, it was long ere this
letter reached the person to whom it was addressed.

* * * * *

CHAPTER I

NARRATIVE

The advantage of laying before the reader, in the words of the actors
themselves, the adventures which we must otherwise have narrated in
our own, has given great popularity to the publication of epistolary
correspondence, as practised by various great authors, and by ourselves
in the preceding chapters. Nevertheless, a genuine correspondence of
this kind (and Heaven forbid it should be in any respect sophisticated
by interpolations of our own!) can seldom be found to contain all in
which it is necessary to instruct the reader for his full comprehension
of the story. Also it must often happen that various prolixities and
redundancies occur in the course of an interchange of letters, which
must hang as a dead weight on the progress of the narrative. To avoid
this dilemma, some biographers have used the letters of the personages
concerned, or liberal extracts from them, to describe particular
incidents, or express the sentiments which they entertained; while they
connect them occasionally with such portions of narrative, as may serve
to carry on the thread of the story.

It is thus that the adventurous travellers who explore the summit of
Mont Blanc now move on through the crumbling snowdrift so slow