“Vulcanv.  Mars.

“The Attorney-General, assisted by Mr. Ripton Thompson, appeared on behalf of the Plaintiff.  Mr. Serjeant Cupid, Q.C., and Mr. Capital Opportunity, for the Defendant.”

“Oh!” snapped Mr. Thompson, senior, peering venom at the unfortunate Ripton over his spectacles, “your notes are on that issue, sir!  Thus you employ your time, sir!”

With another side-shot at the confidential clerk, who retired immediately behind a strong entrenchment of shrugs, Mr. Thompson was pushed by the devil of his rancour to continue reading: 

“This Case is too well known to require more than a partial summary of particulars"...

“Ahem! we will skip the particulars, however partial,” said Mr. Thompson.  “Ah!—­what do you mean here, sir,—­but enough!  I think we may be excused your Legal Considerations on such a Case.  This is how you employ your law-studies, sir!  You put them to this purpose?  Mr. Beazley! you will henceforward sit alone.  I must have this young man under my own eye.  Sir Austin! permit me to apologize to you for subjecting you to a scene so disagreeable.  It was a father’s duty not to spare him.”

Mr. Thompson wiped his forehead, as Brutes might have done after passing judgment on the scion of his house.

“These papers,” he went on, fluttering Ripton’s precious lucubrations in a waving judicial hand, “I shall retain.  The day will come when he will regard them with shame.  And it shall be his penance, his punishment, to do so!  Stop!” he cried, as Ripton was noiselessly shutting his desk, “have you more of them, sir; of a similar description?  Rout them out!  Let us know you at your worst.  What have you there—­in that corner?”

Ripton was understood to say he devoted that corner to old briefs on important cases.

Mr. Thompson thrust his trembling fingers among the old briefs, and turned over the volume Sir Austin had observed, but without much remarking it, for his suspicions had not risen to print.

“A Manual of Heraldry?” the baronet politely, and it may be ironically, inquired, before it could well escape.

“I like it very much,” said Ripton, clutching the book in dreadful torment.

“Allow me to see that you have our arms and crest correct.”  The baronet proffered a hand for the book.

“A Griffin between two Wheatsheaves,” cried Ripton, still clutching it nervously.

Mr. Thompson, without any notion of what he was doing, drew the book from Ripton’s hold; whereupon the two seniors laid their grey heads together over the title-page.  It set forth in attractive characters beside a coloured frontispiece, which embodied the promise displayed there, the entrancing adventures of Miss Random, a strange young lady.

Had there been a Black Hole within the area of those law regions to consign Ripton to there and then, or an Iron Rod handy to mortify his sinful flesh, Mr. Thompson would have used them.  As it was, he contented himself by looking Black Holes and Iron Rods at the detected youth, who sat on his perch insensible to what might happen next, collapsed.