"
"That matter will be seen to. I have ordered Dillon to have ten men in
readiness, if need be for so many, to carry off Pippin, and a few
others, till the adjournment. It will be a dear jest to the lawyer, and
one not less novel than terrifying to him, to miss a court under such
circumstances. I take it, he has never been absent from a session for
twenty years; for, if sick before, he is certain to get well in time for
business, spite of his physician."
The grim smile which disfigured still more the visage of Rivers at the
ludicrous association which the proposed abduction of the lawyer
awakened in his mind, was reflected fully back from that of his
companion, whose habit of face, however, in this respect, was more
notorious for gravity than any other less stable expression. He carried
out, in words, the fancied occurrence; described the lawyer as raving
over his undocketed and unargued cases, and the numberless embryos lying
composedly in his pigeonholes, awaiting, with praiseworthy patience, the
moment when they should take upon them a local habitation and a name;
while he, upon whom they so much depended, was fretting with unassuaged
fury in the constraints of his prison, and the absence from that scene
of his repeated triumphs which before had never been at a loss for his
presence.
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