* *

It is often difficult to differentiate between the accessory to a crime
and the counsel defending the criminal. Williams, of course, might plead
confidential communications, which certainly cover a multitude of sins.
But I prefer to pardon him on the theory that all is fair in love
and--well, law is a sort of civil war. Sometimes not even civil.

If this wasn't a true story, I might report that Williams married a fine
woman in every way worthy of him, and that Meyer as a reward for that
day's good work gave him all his business ever afterwards. But the facts
are Williams never married, and Meyer refused to pay his fee. Whereupon
Williams promptly sued him for the money, won the suit and collected
every cent due him. That is the real reason why the old scamp respects
him nowadays and gives him so much of his business.

BY WAY OF COUNTERCLAIM.

I.

There are office buildings still standing in down-town New York where
the occupant does not merge his identity with the numerals on his door.
But they are very old buildings and the tenants are apt to be as
old-fashioned as their surroundings. It was in one of these venerable
piles that Clayton Sargent passed his legal apprenticeship, and perhaps
this explains some things in his career which are otherwise
inexplicable.

When Sargent was first ushered into the offices of Messrs. Harding,
Peyton, Merrill and Van Standt he found a suite of plainly furnished
rooms connected by green baize doors and surrounded by law books from
floor to ceiling. The desks were large and dignified--almost learned in
their solidity, as though they had soaked in all the wisdom that had
dripped from the pens and all the experience of the pen holders.--The
large iron safe built into the wall of the rear room looked a very
monster of mystery from whose cavernous jaws no secrets would ever
escape, and in whose keeping confidences were secure as with the Sphinx.

No sound of the typewriter was ever heard in those rooms, though the
crackle and snapping of the soft cannel coal in the open fireplaces
would occasionally lure someone into betting that "the Ancients had
surrendered." No telephone ever tinkled its call inside those doors and
no member of the firm ever learned to use that instrument.

Harding, Peyton, Merrill and Van Standt's law papers were a joke in the
profession. They were engrossed on parchment-like paper and tied with
blue or red silk string, and if a seal was u