Mr. Abel Keckwitch was a very respectable
man. He lodged in the house of a gaunt widow,
who lived in a small back street at Pentonville;
and his windows commanded a thriving churchyard.
He paid his rent with scrupulous regularity;
he went to church every Sunday morning;
he took in the Weekly Observer; he kept
a cat; and he played the violoncello. He had
done all these things for the last thirty years,
and he did them advisedly; for Mr. Keckwitch
was of a methodical temperament, and loved to
carry on the unprofessional half of his existence
in a groove of the strictest routine. Having
started in life with the determination of being
eminently respectable, he had modelled himself
after his own matter-of-fact ideal, and cut his
tastes according to his judgment. His cat and
his violoncello were cases in point. He would
have preferred a dog; but he made choice of the
cat, because puss looked more domestic, and
reflected the quiet habits of her master. In like
manner Mr. Keckwitch entertained a secret
leaning towards the concertina; but he yielded
this point in favour of the superior respectability
of the violoncello. And it cannot be denied that
Mr. Keckwitch was right. A more respectable
possession than a violoncello for a single man,
can hardly be conceived. It is the very antithesis
to all that is light and frivolous. It leads to no
conviviality. It neither inclines its owner to
quadrille parties, like the cornet-à-piston, nor
to cold gin-and-water, like the flute; and it lends
itself to amateur psalmody after a manner unequalled
in dreariness by any other instrument.
It was Mr. Keckwitch's custom to practise for an
hour every evening after tea; and in the summer
he did it with the windows open, which afflicted
the neighbourhood with a universal melancholy.
At these times his landlady would shed tears for
her departed husband, and declare that "it was
beautiful, and she felt all the better for it;" and
the photographer next door, who was a low-
spirited young man and read Byron, would shut
himself up in his dark room, and indulge in
thoughts of suicide.

Such was the placid and irreproachable tenor
of Mr. Abel Keckwitch's home life. It suited
his temperament, and it gratified his ambition.
He knew that he inspired the lodging-house
bosom with confidence, and the parochial authorities
with esteem. The pew-opener curtseyed
to him, and the churchwardens nodded to him
affably in the street. In short, Pentonville
regarded him as a thoroughly respectable man.

Scarcely less methodical was the other—the
professional—half of this respectable man's
career. He was punctuality itself, and hung his
hat up in William Trefalden's office every morning
at nine, with as much exactitude as the clock
announced the hour. At one, he repaired to an
eating-house in High Holborn, where he had
dined at the same cost, and from the same dishes,
for the last two-and-twenty years. Don Quixote's
diet before he took to knight-errantry was not
more monotonous; but instead of the "pigeon
extraordinary on Sundays", Mr. Keckwitch dined
on that day at his landlady's table, and stipulated
for pudding. At two, he resumed his seat at the
office desk; and, when there was no particular
pressure of work, went home to his cat and his
violoncello at half-past six. At certain seasons,
however, Mr. Keckwitch and his fellow-clerks
were almost habitually detained for an hour, or
an hour and a half overtime, and thereby grew
the richer; for William Trefalden was a prosperous
man, and paid his labourers fairly.

So sober, so steady, so plodding was the head
clerk's daily round of occupation. He fattened
upon it, and grew asthmatic as the years went
by. No one would have dreamed, to look into
his dull eyes and stolid face, that he could be
other than the veriest machine that ever drove a
quill; but he was nothing of the kind. He was
an invaluable clerk; and William Trefalden
knew his worth precisely. His head was as clear
as his voice was husky; his memory was
prodigious; and for all merely technical purposes,
he was as good a lawyer as Trefalden himself.
He entertained certain views, however, with
regard to his own field of action, which by no
means accorded with those of his employer. He
liked to know everything; and he conceived that
it was his right, as Mr. Trefalden's head clerk,
to establish a general supervision of the whole
of that gentleman's professional and private
affairs. He also deemed it to be in some sort
his duty to find out that which was withheld from
him, and regarded every reservation as a
personal affront. That Mr. Trefalden should keep
certain papers for his own reading; should
answer certain letters with his own hand; and
should sometimes remain in his private room for
long hours after he and the others were dismissed,
preparing unknown documents, and even
holding conferences with strangers upon subjects
that never filtered through to the outer
office, were offences which it was not in Mr.
Keckwitch's nature to forgive. Nor were these
all the wrongs of which he had to complain. It
was William Trefalden's pleasure to keep his
private life and his private affairs strictly to
himself. No man knew whether he was married or
single. No man knew how or where he lived.
His practice was large and increasing, and the
proceeds thereof were highly lucrative. Mr.
Keckwitch had calculated them many a time, and
could give a shrewd guess at the amount of his
master's annual income. But what did he do
with this money? How did he invest it? Did
he invest it at all? Was it lent out at usurious
interest, in quarters not to be named indiscreetly?
Or launched in speculations that would not bear
the light of day? Or gambled away at the tables
of some secret hell in the purlieus of the
Haymarket or Leicester-square? Or was the lawyer
a mere vulgar miser, after all, hoarding his
gold in the cracks and crevices of some ruinous
old house, the address of which he guarded as
jealously as if it were the key to his wealth?

Here was the mystery of mysteries; here was