my name?

"I have been looking for you," said he, "for some months--some months;
and I was so fortunate as to observe the fact when you made a call last
evening on our fellow-citizen, Doctor Rucker. I was--ahem--consulted
professionally by the late lamented Mrs. Rucker--I am a lawyer,
sir--before her death, for the purpose of securing my services in
looking after the interests of her son, Mr. Jacob H. Vandemark."

"Jacob T. Vandemark," said I.

"Why, damn me," said he, looking again at his book, "it _is_ a 'T.'
Lawyer's writing, Jacob, lawyer's writing--notoriously bad, you know."

I sat thinking about the expression, "the interests of Jacob T.
Vandemark," for a long time; but the truth did not dawn an me, my mind
working slowly as usual.

"What interests?" I asked finally.

"The interest," said he, "of her only child in the estate of Mrs.
Rucker."

Then there recurred to my mind the words in my mother's last letter;
that the money had been paid on the settlement of my father's estate,
and that she and Rucker were coming out West to make a new start in
life. I had never given it a moment's thought before, and should have
gone away without asking anybody a single question about it, if this
scaly pettifogger, as I now know him to have been, had not sidled up
to me.

"The estate," said my new friend, "is small, Jacob; but right is right,
and there is no reason why this man Rucker should not be made to
disgorge every cent that's coming to you--every cent! I know Doctor
Rucker slightly, and I hope I shall not shock you if I say that in my
opinion he would steal the Lord's Supper, and wipe his condemned lousy
red whiskers and his freckled claws with the table-cloth! That's the
kind of pilgrim and stranger Rucker is. He will cheat you out of your
eye teeth, sir, unless you are protected by the best legal talent to be
had--the best to be had--the talent and the advice of the man to whom
your late lamented mother went for counsel."

"Yes," said I after a while, "I think he will."

"That is why your mother," he went on, "advised with me; for even if I
have to say it, I'm a living whirlwind in court. Suppose we have
a drink!"

I sat with my drink before me, slowly sipping it, and trying to see
through this man and the new question he had brought up. Certainly, I
was entitled to my mother's property--all of it by rights, whatever the
law might be--for it came through my father. Surely this lawyer must be
a good man,