roof off. The older part of the Temple, to a
lively imagination, is not very unlike the shaft
of a mine, lawyers honeycombing its sides with
their square dens. It is not a cheerful place; but
it does to store parchments in, and to secrete
Chancery papers and calf-bound law books.
Being dark, it is not so easy to see when
a lawyer blushes or refuses a poor person's
fee as it would be in sunnier and brighter
places. To a rich old laundress or a lawyer's
widow, habit might render its sordid and
dismal dimness bearable. Past happiness
consecrates the shadiest places, and perhaps to
Mrs. Lydia Duncomb, Tanfield-court was a
dear old spot, not to be left without almost
a tearing up of the heart-strings.

Mrs. Rhymer had known Mrs. Duncomb
for thirty long years of joy and sorrow. She
came there to take tea and chat and discuss
business, for the old lady had appointed her
executrix, and there were papers to look over.
For the last three or four years Mrs. Duncomb
had become very infirm, and her memory had
decayed; so Mrs. Rhymer received her money for
her, and took care of it. When Mrs. Betty and
Nanny are gone into the second room, leaving
the old bare wainscoted apartment, in which the
bed rises up like a great curtained catafalque,
and the high-backed chairs throw long black
slanting shadows on the walls, and even the
quaint fire-irons have ghostly black doubles of
their own under the scant candlelight, there is
an overhauling of Mrs. Duncomb's strong black
box. The old lady, sitting propped up by the
fireside, asks if Mrs. Rhymer has got the key, for
she wants a little money—about a guinea. The
box by the bedside is solemnly opened by Mrs.
Rhymer, who kneels to open it. There is at the
top a silver tankard, one of the last relics of
Mrs. Duncomb's husband; and in this tankard
is a hundred pound; also a bag with twenty
guineas or so in it.

Mrs. Rhymer takes the bag to the fireside,
and puts a guinea into the old lady's weak and
trembling hand. There are also in the box six
little parcels sealed with black wax—money
(two or three guineas in each) put by for special
uses, after her death; for the old widow knows
that, before long, the two men in black must
stand sentinels in Tanfield-court, and a
certain long black vehicle wait for somebody,
some morning, outside the Temple gate. The
old lady, faltering, repeats the purpose for
which each is set apart—twenty guineas for her
burial, eighteen moidores for any extraordinary
charges, and the thirty or forty shillings in
the green purse to be given to certain poor
people. It is not a pleasant or cheerful thing to
have to talk of such matters. But Mrs. Duncomb
is anxious for all things at her decease
to be done kindly, decorously, and respectably.
With occasional lapses of memory and pauses
when she is tired, she arranges the whole to
her wish. The black box is again closed,
and kind, sensible Mrs. Rhymer takes her leave.

That is on the Thursday. On the Friday, Mrs.
Oliphant, a laundress, calls on Mrs. Duncomb
about eight o'clock, and finds her very weak,
nervous, and low. Mrs. Love, an old friend, is
sitting with her. She tells Mrs. Oliphant and Mrs.
Love, the latter of whom is coming to dine with
Mrs. Duncomb on Sunday evening, that she is
sorry her (Mrs. Oliphant's) master, Mr. Grisly,
whose chambers are opposite, has gone, and has
left his keys with Mr.Twysden, to let the room,
because it seems so lonesome. Mrs. Betty,
the old servant, is sitting at the fire in
rather a moping way too, and with her a good-
looking yet somewhat hard and malign young
charwoman named Malcolm, who before
Christmas worked for Mrs. Duncomb, and
who has come to ask after the health of her
old mistress. Her eyes turn often to the black
box, and then glance to the fire and stare
at the red coals, and remain fixed in a sullen
thoughtful way. Mrs. Betty, who is ill, says
ruefully to Mrs. Oliphant:

"My mistress talks of dying, and would have
me die with her."

This sort of conversation is not invigorating
in a dimly-lighted wainscoted room on a cold
complaining February night. After vainly trying
to cheer up the two old invalids, whose minds
seem to run sympathetically on the same painful
subject, Mrs. Oliphant gets up to go. The
silent thin-lipped young woman rises too, with
one last clinging look at the mysterious black
box and the lock of the door; and says to Mrs.
Oliphant:

"I will go down with you."

The two visitors go down together at a
little before eight, part in Tanfield-court, and
are received outside the Temple doorway, two
human atoms, into the great ocean of life that
flows along Fleet-street ceaselessly from dark
to dark.

On Sunday morning, Mr. Gehagan, a young
Irish barrister who had chambers on the
third floor, over the Alienation Office, in
Tanfield-court, opposite a set occupied by a
friend of his named Kerrel, whose laundress
is that same young woman whom we saw at
Mrs. Duncomb's; she comes about nine o'clock
to do the rooms and light the fire. A few
moments afterwards Kerrel goes across to his
friend Gehagan's bedside, and says, jokingly,
alluding to last night's tavern club: "You were
a good advocate for me last night, and I will
give you a breakfast."

He then sends Sarah with a shilling to buy
some tea; she returns, makes it, and stays
till the horn blows (according to a quaint
custom then prevalent in the Temple) for
commons. After commons, the two friends stroll
out together for a walk in the river-side gardens
immortalised by Shakespeare.

Exactly at one on that Sunday, Mrs. Love,
neat and trim as a Quaker, comes to dine in
Tanfield-court. She is very punctual: it is
exactly one o'clock by the great dials, and the
St. Dunstan giants have just done their lightest
work, and struck out with their clubs, ONE—
sharp, clear, and loud. Mrs. Love shuffles across
the paved court, and at last reaches the special