Temples," replied Randolph, "and I prefer the garden to
the hall."

"So be it," the lawyer said. "Anything but indecision. The Inner
Temple wins. Come down to town with me in the morning, and I will
introduce you. And after that you must, in the first place, work; and
in the second place, work; and in the third place, work. Fill your
glass, Mr. Morton."

"The work should be directed, I suppose," Randolph observed, obeying
the invitation.

"Certainly," said Winter. "But I'll tell you what. Let me direct you
for two months or so. Take the run of my office. See a little of the
actual practice of the law. And then you will go into a pleader's
chambers, with a sense of the reality of your business, which
increases at once both its interest and its profit."

In accepting the offer thus made, Randolph little thought how short
lived its fruits were destined to be. Man proposes, Heaven disposes.
There was a certain poetry in the visions of Trevethlan Castle, which
veiled the real prosiness of the orphans' scheme. They knew nothing of
the world. And as they walked home that evening under the stars, and
thought that so they were shining upon their native towers, the doubts
of the morning again beset them, and they retired to rest with
foreboding hearts.

The next day Mr. Winter drove Randolph to Lincoln's Inn. "Now," said
the lawyer, when they alighted in Chancery Lane, "that is the way to
the Temple. Prowl about; look at the garden, and the dingy buildings
around it. Ask for the treasurer's office. There say you wish to enter
as a student for the bar. They'll give you a paper. Bring it to me.
But take your time. Be here again at one."

Obeying these instructions, the neophyte traversed the hurrying throng
of Fleet Street, and passed under the ancient arch that forms the
portal of Inner Temple Lane, not without a momentary recollection of
Dante's famous "All hope abandon, you who enter here." He felt
immediately that he was in the toils; law stationers on each hand
showed their red tape, and quills, and parchment, polite slips of the
latter presenting King George's greeting to his sheriff of what county
you will; dapper clerks were bustling along with bundles of paper;
every door-post was crowded with a host of names, among which Randolph
might recognize some he had been used to read in the newspaper. He
passed under the porch of the church, recalling the days when the
sword was more powerful than the pen; read the inscri