and realize the deathlike stillness of the whole,
John Grey could just distinguish the heavy breathing of a man,
thereby learning that there was a captive in, at any rate, one of
those prisons on each side of him. As he drew near to the door of Mr
Vavasor's chamber he knew that the breathing came from thence.

On the door there were words inscribed, which were just legible in
the gloom--"Signing Room. Mr Vavasor."

How John Vavasor did hate those words! It seemed to him that they
had been placed there with the express object of declaring his
degradation aloud to the world. Since his grandfather's will had
been read to him he had almost made up his mind to go down those
melancholy stairs for the last time, to shake the dust off his feet
as he left the Accountant-General's Record Office for ever, and
content himself with half his official income. But how could he give
up so many hundreds a year while his daughter was persisting in
throwing away thousands as fast as, or faster than, she could lay her
hands on them?

John Grey entered the room and found Mr Vavasor sitting all alone in
an arm-chair over the fire. I rather think that that breathing had
been the breathing of a man asleep. He was resting himself amidst the
labours of his signing. It was a large, dull room, which could not
have been painted, I should think, within the memory of man, looking
out backwards into some court. The black wall of another building
seemed to stand up close to the window,--so close that no direct ray
of the sun ever interrupted the signing-clerk at his work. In the
middle of the room there was a large mahogany-table, on which lay a
pile of huge papers. Across the top of them there was placed a bit
of blotting-paper, with a quill pen, the two only tools which were
necessary to the performance of the signing-clerk's work. On the
table there stood a row of official books, placed lengthways on
their edges: the "Post-Office Directory," the "Court Circular,"
a "Directory to the Inns of Court," a dusty volume of Acts of
Parliament, which had reference to Chancery accounts,--a volume which
Mr Vavasor never opened; and there were some others; but there was no
book there in which any Christian man or woman could take delight,
either for amusement or for recreation. There were three or four
chairs round the wall, and there was the one arm-chair which the
occupant of the chamber had dragged away from its sacred place to the
hearth-rug. There was