Solicitors,
Serjeant’s Inn, London, E.C.
Bagot read over his letter with tightened lips. Then he copied it carefully and, slipping the original into an envelope, sealed, stamped and addressed this forthwith. As he turned it about, the crest on the back caught his eye—a rose in a mailed fist. For a moment he stared at it: then he turned and glanced at the same emblem cut in the stone of the aged mantelpiece. . . .
Presently he sighed.
“Sic transit,” he said shortly, and, clapping a hat on his head, rose and passed out of the room.
It was true.
The glory was passing. Very soon it would have passed.
There had been a Gray Bagot at Chancery since Harry Plantagenet’s day. In fact, that terrible king had given a Bagot the estate in return for valour. That it was not his to give is beside the point. Men took what they could get in those days, as they do now. And now, Mr. Albert Harp was taking Chancery.
Like the original Bagot, Mr. Harp owed his good fortune to his prowess in time of War. But, while Gray Bagot had won Chancery at the cost of an eye, an arm and a slash on the thigh, which only the bone stopped, Mr. Harp’s succession was due to a judicious administration of his business, which was that of a purveyor of pork.
Sic transit . . .