“‘I don’t care what you’ve heard of him,’ said the Irishman, ‘this is where he gets his chance. He’ll bring us luck.’
“‘Luck!’ said I. ‘A lawyer’s luck is based on common sense and the capacity to see into the future.’
“‘We crack-brained Celts possess that capacity,’ said Tobin. ‘You can come and tell me on Monday whether I’ve been wrong.’
“‘Is Northcote an Irishman, too?’ I asked, feeling myself beginning to waver; and I don’t mind confessing that I have never been able to withstand Michael Tobin from the first hour I met him.
“‘I’ve only seen the man twice,’ said he; ‘but if he doesn’t carry a drop of the Celt under his waistcoat, Cork was not my birthplace.’
“‘Have you seen him in court?’
“‘Not I. The first time I saw him he was addressing a few well-chosen remarks, quoting the pagan philosophers, to a select gathering of the unemployed in Hyde Park. M’Murdo was with me. “My hat,” said he, “that’s a fellow called Northcote; he’s at the bar. A nice place for a barrister, isn’t it?” “Personally,” said I, “I don’t care a curse about the place, but I’d give ten years of my life to have his voice.” There the thing was booming like an organ, and we stayed half an hour listening to rhetoric that might have come out of Burke.’
“‘And the second time?’
“‘I have only the haziest recollection of the occasion. Where it was I can’t recall, but the mob orator was paraphrasing “Hamlet” to gain facility of expression. But I remember thinking, “My son, you will be bursting upon an astonished world one of these fine afternoons, and then we shall all be complaining about your luck for being born so gifted.”’
“And so, my dear Northcote, to round up a long story, thus it was I came to stand in your chambers, dinnerless, at a quarter-past ten of a winter’s night.”