Page:Cornelia Meigs--The windy hill.djvu/186

180 very important with our law books, our profound knowledge, our newly painted sign and very little else. Even while we were studying, it was plain that Anthony, in his erratic, changeable way, was the cleverest of us all.

"And then history repeated itself, as it so often does. The grandson of Martin Hallowell and the two great-grandsons of Reuben fell out with each other over just such a questionable enterprise as had wrecked a partnership a hundred years ago. I can see him now as he came hurrying into our office that day full of the plan for his great scheme—just a quibble of the law and the thing was done. We were all to be made rich and successful by it, he explained. There is no use in describing to you the intricacies of his idea; it was one of those shoal waters in which the honesty of young lawyers can sometimes come to grief. The pursuit of law will winnow out the true from the false; it makes an upright man a hundred times more certain and more proud of his honor: it searches out the small, weak places of a meaner man's soul.

"Anthony tried to make this project sound quite simple and straightforward, but I can remember how narrowly he watched us and how, when he attemped [sic] to laugh at our objections, his voice cracked into shrill falsetto, under pressure of his excitement. I would have argued with him, explained, tried to dissuade him, but Jasper scorned my temporizing and would have had none of it. His sense of justice