Jim answered the summons and entered the room.

“Attend this gentleman to the front door,” said Ishmael, taking up his own hat as if to follow the visitor from the room.

“Mr. Worth, you have insulted me, sir!” exclaimed Walsh excitedly, as he arose and snatched up his money and his brief.

“I hope I am incapable of insulting any man, sir.  You forced upon me a statement that I was unwilling to receive; you asked my opinion upon it and I gave it to you,” replied Ishmael.

“I will have satisfaction, sir!” exclaimed Walsh, clapping his hat upon his head and marching to the door.

“Any satisfaction that I can conscientiously afford you shall be heartily at your service, Mr. Walsh,” said Ishmael, raising his hat and bowing courteously at the retreating figure of the angry visitor.

When he was quite gone Ishmael took up his parcels of letters and documents and went out.  He went first to the post office to mail his letters, and then went to the City Hall, where the Circuit Court was sitting.

As Ishmael walked on towards the City Hall he thought over the dark story he had just heard.  He knew very well that, according to the custom of human nature, the man, however truthful in intention, had put the story in its fairest light; and yet how dark, with sin on one side and sorrow on the other, it looked!  And if it looked so dark from his fair showing, how much darker it must look from the other point of view!  A deep pity for the woman took possession of his heart; an earnest wish to help her inspired his mind.  He thought of his own young mother, whom he had never seen, yet always loved.

And he resolved to assist this poor mother, who had no money to pay counsel to help her defend her children, because it took every cent she could earn to feed and clothe them.

“Yes, the cause of the oppressed is the cause of God!  And I will offer the fruits of my professional labors to him,” said Nora’s son, as he reached the City Hall.

Ishmael was not one to wait for a “favorable opportunity.”  Few opportunities ever came to him except in the shape of temptations, which he resisted.  He made his opportunities.  So when the business that brought him to the courtroom was completed, he turned his steps towards Capitol Hill.  For he had learned from the statements of Judge Merlin and Mr. Walsh that it was there the poor mother kept her little day-school.  After some inquiries, he succeeded in finding the schoolhouse—­a little white frame building, with a front and back door and four windows, two on each side, in a little yard at the corner of the street.  Ishmael opened the gate and rapped at the door.  It was opened by a little girl, who civilly invited him to enter.

A little school of about a dozen small girls, of the middle class in society, seated on forms ranged in exact order on each side the narrow aisle that led up to the teacher’s desk.  Seated behind that desk was a little, thin, dark-haired woman, dressed in a black alpaca and white collar and cuffs.  At the entrance of Ishmael she glanced up with large, scared-looking black eyes that seemed to fear in every stranger to see an enemy or peril.  As Ishmael advanced towards her those wild eyes grew wilder with terror, her cheeks blanched to a deadly whiteness, and she clasped her hands and she trembled.