A Dark Nights Work | Page 3

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A DARK NIGHT'S WORK
CHAPTER I.

In the county town of a certain shire there lived (about forty years ago)
one Mr. Wilkins, a conveyancing attorney of considerable standing.
The certain shire was but a small county, and the principal town in it
contained only about four thousand inhabitants; so in saying that Mr.
Wilkins was the principal lawyer in Hamley, I say very little, unless I
add that he transacted all the legal business of the gentry for twenty
miles round. His grandfather had established the connection; his father
had consolidated and strengthened it, and, indeed, by his wise and
upright conduct, as well as by his professional skill, had obtained for
himself the position of confidential friend to many of the surrounding
families of distinction. He visited among them in a way which no mere
lawyer had ever done before; dined at their tables--he alone, not
accompanied by his wife, be it observed; rode to the meet occasionally
as if by accident, although he was as well mounted as any squire among
them, and was often persuaded (after a little coquetting about
"professional engagements," and "being wanted at the office") to have a
run with his clients; nay, once or twice he forgot his usual caution, was
first in at the death, and rode home with the brush. But in general he
knew his place; as his place was held to be in that aristocratic county,
and in those days. Nor let be supposed that he was in any way a
toadeater. He respected himself too much for that. He would give the
most unpalatable advice, if need were; would counsel an unsparing
reduction of expenditure to an extravagant man; would recommend
such an abatement of family pride as paved the way for one or two

happy marriages in some instances; nay, what was the most likely piece
of conduct of all to give offence forty years ago, he would speak up for
an unjustly-used tenant; and that with so much temperate and
well-timed wisdom and good feeling, that he more than once gained his
point. He had one son, Edward. This boy was the secret joy and pride
of his father's heart. For himself he was not in the least ambitious, but it
did cost him a hard struggle to acknowledge that his own business was
too lucrative, and brought in too large an income, to pass away into the
hands of a stranger, as it would do if he indulged his ambition for his
son by giving him a college education and making him into a barrister.
This determination on the more prudent side of the argument took place
while Edward was at Eton. The lad had, perhaps, the largest allowance
of pocket-money of any boy at school; and he had