On one of the streets radiating from the court-house square, they stopped before a dingy-looking door on which was fastened a sign reading: “James G. Pleadwell, Attorney-at-Law.”
Tom was taken, first, into the outer room of the law-offices, where a man sat at a table writing, and two or three other men, evidently miners, were talking together in a corner; and then, after a few moments, the door into an inner apartment was opened and he was called in there. This room was more completely furnished than the outer one; there was a carpet on the floor, and there were pictures on the walls; also there were long shelves full of books, all bound alike in leather, all with red labels near the tops and black labels near the bottoms of their backs.
At the farther side of the room sat a short, slim, beardless man, with pale face and restless eyes, whom Tom recognized as having been in the mine with the visiting strikers the day Bennie was lost; and by a round centre table sat Lawyer Pleadwell, short and stout, with bristly mustache and a stubby nose on which rested a pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses.
As Tom entered the room, the lawyer regarded him closely, and waving his hand towards an easy chair, he said,—
“Be seated, my lad. Your name is—a’—let me see”—
“Tom—Thomas Taylor, sir,” answered the boy.
“Well, Tom, you saw the fire at the Valley Breaker?”
“Yes, sir,” said Tom; “I guess I was the first one ’at saw it.”
“So I have heard,” said the lawyer, slowly; then, after a pause,—
“Tom have you told to any one what you saw, or whom you saw at the moment of the breaking out of that fire?”