pursuit of which his life had been wasted, at least within his grasp. No doubt, in his blissful vision, he already began to look on me as a recipient of his bounty, and to wonder at the coolness with which I regarded the glittering prize before me. But I had had many such clients before, and, when I was very young at the bar, had been dazzled more than once in the same way.

66

How much can you afford me as a retainer?"

"Now?" He seemed to be engaged in an abstruse calculation as if over the resources of a nation. "Ten thousand dollars when the case is finished, say six months or a year hence. Suppose we say five dollars, sir, on account."

There was something so painfully eager in the look that accompanied these words, that I suppressed the smile which had been prompted by the pathos in his offer, and signified my acceptance. My client drew from his pocket a lank purse, and from the purse a solitary coin. Poor dreamer! he was paying his all for this one more ticket in the lottery.

I had opened my lips to bid him leave his papers and take back the coin when my eye fell on it. One scrutinizing glance, and I jumped from my seat as if electrified by the little piece of gold.

"Where did you get this money, sir?" A transient gleam of former fire shone in the old man's eye.

"I do not see, sir, what that has to do with my case."

"By heavens!" I shouted, collaring the old man and fairly lifting him out of his seat: "if you do not tell me this instant- 19

I

Just at this moment my office door opened to admit my learned and eloquent brother Flourish. What that eminent counsel thought of the scene, do not care to guess. The personal appearance of my client was not suggestive of any temptation to a felonious assault, nor did his manner indicate any provocation which could have called for chastisement; and these two suppositions being impossible, Mr. Flourish stared with undisguised amazement at my unprofessional conduct. His presence brought me to myself, and, with many apologies, I explained that this coin, which, as my hearers would notice, was peculiarly marked, had former

ly been in my own possession, and that I was anxious, for particular reasons, to trace its subsequent history. The old man hesitated, and stammered, and cast so many side glances at the door, that I began to think we had fallen upon one of the chief conspirators. Here Mr. Flourish came to my assistance, with his blandest smile, and most mellifluous tone, and in five minutes had drawn from my client all that he knew about it. Assuring myself that he would attend and testify to the same facts on the following day, I dismissed him, and then rapidly recounted to Flourish the facts of the case. hard old lawyer listened complaisantly, and when I had finished, dryly expressed an opinion, that the young woman should be acquitted.

The

I had conceived a hope, while telling the story, of interesting Mr. Flourish sufficiently in the case to induce him to undertake the management of the defense. For that task I felt myself disqualified by other causes beside my want of experience in criminal law. I was liable to be called as a witness for the prosecution, and was a most important one for the defense; and above all, I felt that my own personal sympathics were too strongly excited for the prisoner to manage the affair with requisite coolness and skill. Flourish, however, who saw in the case nothing but a very commonplace incident of criminal practice, was not easily to be persuaded. The sensibilities of an elderly lawyer, in large practice, lie very far down, and are covered by a thick rind of worldly wisdom.

"Consider, my dear sir," said he, "how many cases of this kind are occurring every day, and how precious my time is to me. 'Pon my word, my clients would be in a pretty mess if I spent my time on petty affairs like this."

home, feeling that I had broken friendship with the softest-hearted, simplestheaded fool at the bar. Why, man, you would turn the whole fraternity into a gang of knight-errants, roaming up and down Wall street seeking to set this crooked world straight again."

"And so they ought to be, Mr. Flourish."

"Hum! I can't say I'm ready to give an opinion on that matter. But the girl, I see, is fairly on my hands. I'll just step down and tell my young men to put one or two things off till next day, and come back to go over the case again with you."

Glorious old Flourish!

The sensi

bilities are there, after all, hard as it is to find them. Beneath all his rich clients, and worldly wisdom, and long briefs, there is a true man's heart beating, still, as there is in the bosom of many a hard-faced, wrinkled old lawyer beside. Fraud, and wrong, and heartlessness there are among us, God knows! But He and He only knows, also, the deeds that have been done in secret in those dingy, dusty offices, which shall stand forth effulgently when the great book is opened at the Judgment-day!

IV.

I was busy with the police authorities that evening, and had no time to communicate with Alice; but the next morning when I saw her brought into court, looking so broken-hearted and helpless, I blamed myself for having left her thus to drink the cup of bitterness to the very dregs. In a few whispered words I bade her be of good cheer; but she scarcely seemed to heed me at all, so oppressed was she by the sight of the crowd, and the keen sense of her forlorn condition. Save her poor mother, who had risen from a sick bed to accompany her, she did not know that she had a friend there. Even I, though she knew I meant her kindly, had been the unwilling means of placing her there. I looked eagerly around the court-room. On a front bench sat Mr. Forceps, the pawnbroker, chief witness for the prosecution; and some distance behind was my old client, true to his promise, and pleased to have at last a part to take in court. It seemed to him like a little rehearsal for the great drama of his own

case.

The district attorney opened the case, and was about to call me as the first witness. Mr. Flourish had not yet made his appearance. Greatly to my relief, the pawnbroker came forward, and whispered into the attorney's ear, who immediately called him to the stand.

"I believe I must give Mr. Forceps the precedence," he said to me.

"I think you had better, brother Rowland," answered Flourish, over my shoulder, at the same time divesting himself of his overcoat, and distributing good-humored though somewhat patronizing recognitions among the smaller fry of lawyers around him.

Mr. Forceps testified to the attempt made to pass the counterfeit coin on him, as previously detailed. His direct examination was soon over, and he turned to Mr. Flourish with a smile of confidence, which to me seemed not altogether natural. It looked as if he were bracing himself up for a contest of nerve with the counsel for the defense. I have seen a great many very honest witnesses do the same thing.

But if Mr. Forceps looked for a grand display of inquisitorial tactics, he was destined to be mistaken. Mr. Flourish simply turned for a moment towards him remarking:

"I only want to know if I have understood you aright, Mr. Forceps; I think you said this was your only transaction with the prisoner-I mean the only occasion on which you received money from her."

Per

"I never received any money at all from her, unless you call that thing money," pointing to the coin. haps you call that money; but I don't, sir." And Mr. Forceps smiled approvingly at his own retort."

How long did I understand that you had this coin in your possession?" blandly rejoined the counsel.

No time at all; I know it was bad the minute it touched the drawer, and took it out and returned it."

You took it out, and returned it," replied Flourish, as if mechanically repeating the words. "That will do,

sir."

Mr. Bullion then testified to the character of the coin, and to the prisoner's admission in my office that it was the same one she had offered to the pawnbroker. The prosecution rested.

Without any formal opening of the

defense, Mr. Flourish nodded to me, and I took the stand. The district attorney threw himself back in his chair, and listened carelessly while I detailed the particulars of my interview with Alice on the eventful Saturday night. But when I mentioned the knife-marks on the coin I had given her, his practiced mind foresaw at once our line of defense. It was, doubtless, the first intimation he had received that any substantial defense would be attempted; and in his surprise he started to his feet, and directed a searching glance, first at me, and then in rapid succession at the prisoner, her counsel, and his own witnesses.

"Have you ever seen that marked coin since, Mr. Quidam ?" "I have."

"When and where?"

"It is here, said I," producing it; "I received it back, about ten days ago, from a client, Mr. Richard Grosvenor." Having satisfied myself that I was positive as to the identity of the coin, the district attorney allowed me to stand aside, and Mr. Flourish called Grosvenor, who, of course, confirmed my statement, as to the receipt of the coin from him, at the time of its reappearance.

"Will you state, Mr. Grosvenor, if you can, how that coin came into your hands?"

"I received it," said the old man--a slight color coming into his bloodless face-" on the evening of Saturday, the -th of December, from Mr. Forceps, the pawnbroker.”

"How can you be so positive as to the precise date, Mr. Grosvenor, and the identity of the coin?" asked the district attorney.

"The date, sir, I fix by this," producing one of Mr. Forcep's tickets; "and the coin-ah me, sir, it is the only gold piece I have had for many a long day. I have spent my money in the law, sir; but I am going to get it all back soon. You must know I have a case, sir}}

From the details of Mr. Grosvenor's case, we were saved by the district attorney. His hawk-eye had caught a glimpse of his chief witness gliding softly through the crowd, toward the door.

“Mr. Forceps! Mr. Forceps! officer, close that door, and let no man pass," he thundered. "Bring that witness back here!"

Flushed with excitement, his fine form drawn up to its utmost height, and his glorious eyes flashing with indignation at the foul wrong which had been attempted and almost effected in the sacred name of justice, he stood, surrounded by an astonished group, the only one that seemed to retain any selfpossession. Even we who had been in the secret, and planned the surprise, were less masters of the scene. looked, indeed, all that he was-the faithful minister of retributive justice, magnifying his office by a love of right, before which all petty ambitions sank into nothingness.

Пе

Alas! that form and face live only in the memory of us who loved him. A sad, sad day it was when we heard that the lustre of those eyes was dimmed in untimely death, and heavy hearts, mourning as but few sorrows can make strong men mourn, had we, the funeral train, when the bar followed their chieftain to the tomb. In the midst of his years and his labors, as a great ship goes down in the van of the battle, so went he down into the depths of the grave.

It scarcely need be added, that the jury acquitted Alice, without leaving their box, and that the pawnbroker, charged both with uttering counterfeit coin, and with perjury, slept that night in the cell she had left. Perhaps some time I may tell of what afterwards happened to her, as well as to my old client, and his interminable case. But now there is sadness on my heart, as I think of that scene in court, and I am garrulous no longer.

pal crest, and send their flanks far into the lower grounds. An endless mass of sharp ridges and bare peaks, mixed with gigantic masses of pure snow, fading coldly into the blue horizon, present a scene of sublime quiet and repose, unbroken but by the avalanche or the thunder. Their glaciers and snow-fields, which are gilt only, but never warmed by the sun, and from which, through rents in the clouds, the green, blooming world is seen far below, the feeling of immutability suggested by their stupendous height, even the dizzy paths that lead over frightful abysses, and the "roads of terror" that pass close by unfathomed crevices and threatening masses of snow-all these add fear to our admiration and awe to our pleasure. It seems, at first, as if nature had created all this grand scenery for herself only, utterly mindless of man. And yet even here she has not forgotten him. Close by those regions of Titanic confusion and fearful solitude, at the very side of those gigantic rocks, in which we fancy we see the skeleton of the earth, and of those dazzling, deathhiding fields of snow and ice, there greet us sweet meadows with fragrant Alpine flowers. Green pastures spread their soft carpet to the edge of the icy mass, and streams gambol merrily over rock and root. Thus, here, also, life cometh out of death, and the awfully grand is kindly blended with the gently beautiful.

The effect of mountain scenery on the eye, is naturally much varied by lights and colors; the whole hue is very different in the clear, warm air of a southern landscape, and in the moist, vapory atmosphere of the North. The Alps glitter and glare in the dazzling splendor of everlasting ice, and yet greet us with the bright freshness of the color of youth, so that Italian poets with justice speak of their forest-covered brows, as of fit emblems of all that is imperishable. The granite fastnesses of Sweden loom up in subdued tints, fretted as they are by the tooth of time, and covered with the tender mantle of warm but sad-colored mosses. Dim, dismal mists forever shroud their hoary heads, and the melancholy songs of northern bards see, in their weather-beaten, decaying baldness, the irresistible power of age.

and year, and herein lies one of their greatest beauties. As the deep valleys are now lighted up by gorgeous floods of sunshine, and now buried in dark night; as bold spurs, losing themselves into the plain, cast deep shadows on a sunny landscape, or rise, gilded by the rays of the setting sun, from out a sea of shadows, the whole of the mountain range assumes a new form. But more important still, for their effect at a distance, than the variety of different hues and changing shadows, is the principal form of the mountains themselves. A long, straight line, rising to nearly equal height at all points, gives to a chain of mountains the appearance of a mere wall or rampart, that closes the horizon, and fills the mind with undefined sadness. Far more pleasing is the impression, when bold heights and sharp-pointed peaks break the uniformity here and there, as in our own Blue Ridge. Some countries boast of odd round mountains, that rise suddenly from the midst of large plains: they are mere shapeless masses, without any proportion, and convey not unfrequently to the mind the painful idea of a colossal grave-mound. Now and then, as on our northern waters, and in almost all long, far-stretching chains, formations are found, that appear to a lively fancy like familiar objects-a sleeping bear, a striking profile, or even a whole standing figure. Such forms may, of course, please our imagination and occupy our memory, but they often affect, unpleasantly, our aesthetic feeling, which cannot be satisfied with what is merely grotesque or amusing.

Mountains are, unfortunately, much less known than valleys. Even prejudices are nourished against them, and men fancy that the snow-covered peaks and the silently wandering glaciers are useless in the great household of nature. As, if under the rule of the Almighty, all things were not made to work together in sweet harmony. Did he not say, in early days, "Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain?" For it is from the eternal snow and ice of these apparently sterile heights, that, year after year, abundant streams descend and nourish the thirsty earth. In the temperate zones, this advantage is less clearly seen, as rain

or