ed flannel dressing-gown, with a short pipe in his mouth, a
pug-dog on his lap, and a French novel in his hands.

"Is it business?" asked Old Sharon, speaking in a hoarse, asthmatical
voice, and fixing a pair of bright, shameless, black eyes attentively on
the two visitors.

"It _is_ business," Mr. Troy answered, looking at the old rogue who had
disgraced an honorable profession, as he might have looked at a reptile
which had just risen rampant at his feet. "What is your fee for a
consultation?"

"You give me a guinea, and I'll give you half an hour." With this reply
Old Sharon held out his unwashed hand across the rickety ink-splashed
table at which he was sitting.

Mr. Troy would not have touched him with the tips of his own fingers for
a thousand pounds. He laid the guinea on the table.

Old Sharon burst into a fierce laugh--a laugh strangely accompanied by a
frowning contraction of his eyebrows, and a frightful exhibition of the
whole inside of his mouth. "I'm not clean enough for you--eh?" he said,
with an appearance of being very much amused. "There's a dirty old man
described in this book that is a little like me." He held up his French
novel. "Have you read it? A capital story--well put together. Ah, you
haven't read it? You have got a pleasure to come. I say, do you mind
tobacco-smoke? I think faster while I smoke--that's all."

Mr. Troy's respectable hand waved a silent permission to smoke, given
under dignified protest.

"All right," said Old Sharon. "Now, get on."

He laid himself back in his chair, and puffed out his smoke, with eyes
lazily half closed, like the eyes of the pug-dog on his lap. At that
moment, indeed there was a curious resemblance between the two. They
both seemed to be preparing themselves, in the same idle way, for the
same comfortable nap.

Mr. Troy stated the circumstances under which the five hundred pound
note had disappeared, in clear and consecutive narrative. When he had
done, Old Sharon suddenly opened his eyes. The pug-dog suddenly opened
his eyes. Old Sharon looked hard at Mr. Troy. The pug looked hard at Mr.
Troy. Old Sharon spoke. The pug growled.

"I know who you are--you're a lawyer. Don't be alarmed! I never saw
you before; and I don't know your name. What I do know is a lawyer's
statement of facts when I hear it. Who's this?" Old Sharon looked
inquisitively at Moody as he put the question.

Mr. Troy introduced Moody as a competent witness, thoroughly acquainte