t, smiling, clean-shaven, and fresh as a dew-born primrose, with,
perchance, two or three of the prettiest girls in town at his elbow to
greet his sallies with approving laughter.

Crailey had been so long in the habit of following every impulse,
no matter how mad, that he enjoyed an almost perfect immunity from
condemnation, and, whatever his deeds, Rouen had learned to say, with
a chuckle, that it was "only Crailey Gray again." But his followers were
not so privileged. Thus, when Mr. Gray, who in his libations sometimes
developed the humor of an urchin, went to the Pound at three in the
morning of New Year's Day, hung sleigh-bells about the necks of the
cattle and drove them up and down the streets, himself hideously blowing
a bass horn from the back of a big brown steer, those roused from
slumber ceased to rage, and accepted the exploit as a rare joke, on
learning that it was "only Crailey Gray;" but the unfortunate young
Chenoweth was heavily frowned upon and properly upbraided because he had
followed in the wake of the bovine procession, mildly attempting to play
upon a flageolet.

Crailey never denied a folly nor defended an escapade. The latter was
always done for him, because he talked of his "graceless misdoings" (so
he was wont, smilingly, to call them) over cups of tea in the afternoons
with old ladies, lamenting, in his musical voice, the lack of female
relatives to guide him. He was charmingly attentive to the elderly
women, not from policy, but because his manner was uncontrollably
chivalrous; and, ever a gallant listener, were the speaker young, old,
great or humble, he never forgot to catch the last words of a sentence,
and seldom suffered for a reply, even when he had drowsed through a
question. Moreover, no one ever heard him speak a sullen word, nor saw
him wear a brow of depression. The single creed to which he was constant
was that of good cheer; he was the very apostle of gayety, preaching
it in parlor and bar; and made merry friends with battered tramps and
homeless dogs in the streets at night.

Now and then he would spend several days in the offices of Gray
& Vanrevel, Attorneys and Counsellors-at-Law, wearing an air of
unassailable virtue; though he did not far overstate the case when he
said, "Tom does all the work and gives me all the money not to bother
him when he's getting up a case."

The working member of the firm got up cases to notable effect, and few
lawyers in the State enjoyed h