Later in the day Robert Dalton came to the office and requested Carpenter and Lomax to join him in his private room. His face showed plainly the evidences of a great mental strain. When they were together he closed the door, and, turning to them, said that he had examined the question which they had raised, in regard to Mrs. Van Bartan's will, and he was now satisfied that he had made a prodigious error in drafting the instrument; that as his mistake would deprive a powerful church of a vast estate, endless criticism of a most acrimonious character would follow; that it was not just for any part of this criticism to fall upon the shoulders of either Carpenter or Lomax, and, therefore, he had determined to publicly withdraw from the firm. To this they made scarcely a courteous objection, and Dalton accordingly withdrew, publishing an announcement thereof in the daily papers.
The report of a great error in Mrs. Van Bartan's will spread through the city with the marvellous rapidity of an evil rumor. The vials of bitter criticism were poured out upon the head of Robert Dalton. Men declared that they had long suspected that he was a sham, a posing ignoramus, a dangerous blunderer.
The executor, Harrison, as was his duty, attempted to execute the charitable bequest, but, of course, failed. Whereupon the press of the city stood up in the market-place like the selfcomplacent Pharisee and declared that in this day mistakes were crimes; that it was not enough for an attorney to do the best he knew,—it was his duty to know; it was not enough for an attorney to be honest, he must he likewise competent; that the law was a learned profession in which the bungler was equally as dangerous as the knave; that vast estates were conveyed by will, and how easily by mistake or design a lawyer could destroy the testator's most sacred wish; he could rob the helpless of his right, the dependent of his inheritance, or the charitable institution of its patron's aid, and all this without color of criminal wrong. The law, it asserted, punished with relentless hand the man who blundered in positions of trust; it punished with awful penalties the man who blundered in the heat of passion, but it had no censure, no sting, no scourge for the man who blundered at the bedside of the dying.
Thus was Robert Dalton's fame as a lawyer damned into the veriest blackness.
III
ON a certain bleak Thursday of January, Randolph Mason sat in his office, absorbed in the study of a great map which was spread out on his table. The day was so dark and lowering that the electric light above the table had been turned on. Presently the door opened and the little clerk Parks looked in. He watched the lawyer for a few moments intently; then he withdrew his head. A few minutes later, the door again opened and a woman entered, and closed it behind her. She stopped and looked at the counsellor, bending over his map. The picture was not a pleasant one. The man's streaked, gray hair was rumpled, and his heavy-muscled face under the glare of the light was rather more brutal than otherwise. Then she crossed to the table and threw a newspaper down on the map.
“Will you kindly read that marked paragraph?” she said.
Randolph Mason looked up. For a moment he did not recall the woman, her face was so very white. Then he recognized his client, Mrs. Van Bartan.