She stopped before the wrought-iron weatherbeaten sign which hung from the doorway leading up a flight of stairs to the young lawyer’s office. Her heart fluttered with a moment of uncertainty as she felt herself standing on the threshold of the most daring step of her life. The plain gold letters of the sign held her with a strange fascination:=
````JOHN GRAHAM
```ATTORNEY AND COUNSELLOR
`````AT LAW=
She had never noticed this piece of plain black iron before, and yet somehow it seemed a part of the record of her deep inner life, and, as it moved, gently stirred by the soft breezes of a Southern day, creaking on the rod from which it hung, the sound thrilled her with a feeling of strange terror. She turned quickly away, her heart pounding with excitement, and began to retrace her steps.
She walked a block, stopped, flushed red, frowned and turned on her heels.
“I’ll not be a silly coward. I’ll not look back again until it’s done.”
This time she walked firmly up the stairs and gently knocked on his door.
John had just finished his business with Nickaroshinski.
The old Jew had accepted his personal note unsecured by any endorsement for the money needed to send Billy north to college. He sat in brooding silence, idly holding between his fingers the paper on which he had recorded the memorandum of his new indebtedness. He was not worrying over his ability to pay—of that he felt sure. Butler had answered his suit by removing the order of his disbarment on Larkin’s advice the day of the County Convention. His practice gave promise of a comfortable living.