In the pursuit of personal information, which should have been in his possession before, that somewhat too easy-going young soldier, Roland Lindsay, in the course of a day or two, found himself in the 'Gray Metropolis of the North,' or rather in that portion thereof which has sprung up within the last hundred and forty years or so.
The office of Mr. M'Wadsett, W.S., was amid a number of such 'wasps' nests,' in a small and rather gloomy and depressing arena known as Thistle Court, under the shadow of St. Andrew's great, sombre, and circular-shaped church.
The situation was a good one for a prosperous town lawyer's office, and Mr. M'Wadsett was a prosperous—and, as usual with many of them, effusively pious—lawyer, and all about him, whether by chance or design, was arranged to give clients—victims many deemed themselves—an impression that his practice was wide, select, and respectable—intensely respectable—while Mr. M'Wadsett never omitted church services at least twice daily, for the kirk was his fetish—the test of a decorous life, like his black suit and white necktie.
He was busily engaged just then, so Roland sent in his card and had to wait, which he felt as a kind of hint that he was not so important a client now as he might have been. The room he was ushered into was a dull one, overlooking the gloomy court; and slowly the time seemed to pass, for Roland was in an agony of impatience now to know the worst—the profound folly of his father, for whom his feelings just then were, to say the least of them, of a somewhat mingled cast.
Mr. M'Wadsett's office consisted of several rooms—the interior and upper floors of an old-fashioned house. In one of these, partly furnished like a parlour, the walls hung with fly-blown maps and prospectuses—a waiting-room—Roland was left to fume and 'cool his heels'; while in one somewhere adjacent he heard a curious clashing of fire-irons, and a voice giving the—to him—somewhat familiar words of command, but in a suppressed tone:
'Guard—point—two! Low guard—point—two!' etc., for it was evident that some of the clerks who were rifle volunteers were having a little bayonet exercise, till a bell rang, when they all vaulted upon their stools and began to write intensely, for then the voice of old Mr. M'Wadsett was heard, and Roland was ushered into his presence.
His room was snug and cosy, albeit its principal furniture consisted of green charter boxes on iron frames, all of which held secrets relating to the families whose well-known names were displayed upon them. How much, indeed, did he not know about all the leading proprietors of Fife and Kinross?
He received his visitor warmly and pleasantly enough, spoke of the war in Egypt, his health, the weather, of course, and then when a pause ensued, Roland stated the object for which he had come.
The lawyer, a fussy little man, with a sharp, keen manner, and sharp, keen gray eyes, raised his silver-rimmed glasses above his bushy white eyebrows, and said:
'My dear sir, I sent a copy of your respected father's will to Egypt.'