“His uncle,” she had said, “had given it, and had taken it back again,—had taken it back that he might waste it on those Mackenzies.”

All this he had heard very often, but he had never known anything of a deed of gift. Was it not singular, he thought, that the draft of such a deed should be lying at his foot at this moment.

He showed nothing of this in his face, and still sat there with his chin resting on his umbrella. But certainly stronger ideas than usual of the great wrongs which he had suffered did come into his head as he looked upon the paper at his feet. He began to wonder whether he would be justified in taking it up and inspecting it. But as he was thinking of this the pale-faced man rose from his chair, and after moving among the papers on the ground for an instant, selected this very document, and carried it with him to his table. Mr Ball, as his eyes followed the parchment, watched the young man dust it and open it, and then having flattened it with his hand, glance over it till he came to a certain spot. The pale-faced clerk, accustomed to such documents, glanced over the ambages, the “whereases,” the “aforesaids,” the rich exuberance of “admors.,” “exors.,” and “assigns,” till he deftly came to the pith of the matter, and then he began to make extracts, a date here and a date there. John Ball watched him all the time, till the door was opened, and old Mr Slow himself appeared in the room.

He stepped across the papers to shake hands with his client, and then shook hands also with Mr Ball, whom he knew. His eye glanced at once down to the box, and after that over towards the pale-faced clerk. Mr Ball perceived that the attorney had joined in his own mind the operation that was going on with these special documents, and the presence of these two special visitors; and that he, in some measure, regretted the coincidence. There was something wrong, and John Ball began to consider whether the old lawyer could be an old scoundrel. Some lawyers, he knew, were desperate scoundrels. He said nothing, however; but, obeying Mr Slow’s invitation, followed him and his cousin into the sanctum sanctorum of the chambers.

“They didn’t tell me you were here at first,” said the lawyer, in a tone of vexation, “or I wouldn’t have had you shown in there.”

John Ball thought that this was, doubtless, true, and that very probably they might not have been put in among those papers had Mr Slow known what was being done.

“The truth is,” continued the lawyer, “the Duke of F——‘s man of business was with me, and they did not like to interrupt me.”