"Well," said the solicitor, "I should say at the present time you have undeniable claims to be considered the most remarkable man in London. I can't fathom what has come over you."
"I was thrown off my balance a little yesterday," said Northcote hoarsely.
"Yesterday, my friend, you were a great man; to-day, you are a prig."
"You are right. Yesterday, a great man stooping to foulness; to-day, a mediocrity aspiring to virtue."
"Well, my dear boy," said the solicitor earnestly, "my last words are these. Be guided by your talent. Greatness is written all over you; it is in your eyes; it proceeds out of your mouth. Play up to your destiny, like a wise fellow, and leave hymns and sermons and disquisitions upon morality to the official purveyors of those condiments."
"You are the devil!"
"Well, Faust, dear old boy, if it come to that, it does amuse me sometimes to think that I have not dabbled in human nature in divers forms during the last twenty years without getting to know a little about it. And I put it to you, do you suppose I took the trouble—I, one of the most sagacious criminal lawyers in London—to climb up to this attic without my dinner at ten o'clock of a December night, without having taken your size in hats and your chest measurement?"
"I say, you are the devil."
"Your estimate is too liberal. There is nothing of his Satanic Majesty about me; but, all the same, I am always perfectly willing to employ him. I am always prepared to pay him liberally to fight these
