♦ I (From Tom Hood's Comic Annual.) Quisby was perhaps the most rascally attorney in London, and Quisby occupied chambers at Number Six, Hardenne build ings, Temple. It was the oldest, dustiest, dirtiest, most ramshackle corner of the Temple in existence, and Quisby's stair case was the oldest, dustiest, dirtiest, and most ramshackle in the entire buildings. There was an air of mystery about the dwellers on the staircase ; you never knew when to find them in, though it did not take you long to find some of them out. The staircase at Hardenne buildings was a hopeless one. It was a series of sported oaks all the way from the top to the bottom. You.came to the conclusion that the dwellers ia its chambers were an eccentric race, who always entered their rooms by the window in some mysterious fashion. It was a massive staircase, with wide oaken steps, and with a bold balustrade fit for a baronial hall. Yet it looked sad and ghostly, and had the stamp

of g-rim- despair impressed on: every plhaS, on every joist, and on every stanchion in its constitution. It looked like a surreptitious ladder to the Court of Chancery, or the backstairs entrance to a family vault. 3 knew this staircase pretty well, for I had ■ been up and down it a great many times in search of Quisby. I first mounted it many years ago, to see this gentleman, who had been my uncle's solicitor. He had drawn up my uncle's will, he was his sole executor, and in the event of his dying without any relatives, all the property was to go to Qui&by. My unole had, I- do not know why, the highest opinion of Quisby. At the time of my uncle's last illness I was knocking about Europe, and happened to hear of it quite by chance over the tables at Baden- Baden. I came straight away to town, and was with him until he died. I was his only remaining relaiion, consequently all his pro perty would come to me. I found Quisby continually at the house ? he was always buzzing about and making, himself busy with private papers. I did not much like his interference,, but he was such a confidential friend of my uncle's that I could not do much to prevent it. 