“Jack,” said the barrister to his companion, “I remember that poor fellow’s face; you spoke more truly than you were aware of; he really is one of my clients, poor man.”
“Poor man!” echoed Halkit—“I suppose you mean he is your one and only client?”
“That’s not my fault, Jack,” replied the other, whose name I discovered was Hardie. “You are to give me all your business, you know; and if you have none, the learned gentleman here knows nothing can come of nothing.”
“You seem to have brought something to nothing though, in the case of that honest man. He looks as if he were just about to honour with his residence the Heart of Mid-Lothian.”
“You are mistaken—he is just delivered from it.—Our friend here looks for an explanation. Pray, Mr. Pattieson, have you been in Edinburgh?”
I answered in the affirmative.
“Then you must have passed, occasionally at least, though probably not so faithfully as I am doomed to do, through a narrow intricate passage, leading out of the north-west corner of the Parliament Square, and passing by a high and antique building with turrets and iron grates,
Making good the saying odd,
‘Near the church and far from God’”—
Mr. Halkit broke in upon his learned counsel, to contribute his moiety to the riddle—“Having at the door the sign of the Red man”—
“And being on the whole,” resumed the counsellor interrupting his friend in his turn, “a sort of place where misfortune is happily confounded with guilt, where all who are in wish to get out”—