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256 particularly those connected with the law, still lived in flats or dungeons of the Old Town. The manners also of some of the veterans of the law had not admitted innovation. One or two eminent lawyers still saw their clients in taverns, as was the general custom fifty years before; and although their habits were already considered as old-fashioned by the younger barristers, yet the custom of mixing wine and revelry with serious business, was still maintained by those senior counsellors who loved the old road, either because it was such, or because they had got too well used to it to travel any other. Among these praisers of the past time, who with ostentatious obstinacy affected the manners of a former generation, was this same Paulus Pleydell, Esq. otherwise a good scholar, an excellent lawyer, and a worthy man. Under the guidance of his trusty attendant. Colonel Mannering, after threading a dark lane or two, reached the High-