When he had dealt a certain number of dishes around me, as if they were cards and he was telling my fortune, he leaned over the table and said, with interrogating confidence:-- "I reckon you call that Mr.Manners of yours a good lawyer ?" We were very loyal to each other in the Club, and I replied with youthful enthusiasm that he was considered one of the most promising at the bar.

And, remembering Tournelli, I added confidently that whoever engaged him to look after their property interests had secured a treasure.
"But is he good in criminal cases--before a police court, for instance ?" continued Tom.
I believed--I don't know on what grounds--that Manners was good in insurance and admiralty law, and that he looked upon criminal practice as low; but I answered briskly--though a trifle startled--that as a criminal lawyer he was perfect.
"He could advise a man, who had a row hanging on, how to steer clear of being up for murder--eh ?" I trusted, with a desperate attempt at jocosity, that neither he nor Tournelli had been doing anything to require Manners's services in that way.
"It would be too late, THEN," said Tom, coolly, "and ANYBODY could tell a man what he ought to have done, or how to make the best of what he had done; but the smart thing in a lawyer would be to give a chap points BEFOREHAND, and sorter tell him how far he could go, and yet keep inside the law.

How he might goad a fellow to draw on him, and then plug him--eh ?" I looked up quickly.

There was nothing in his ordinary, good-humored, but not very strong face to suggest that he himself was the subject of this hypothetical case.

If he were speaking for Tournelli, the Italian certainly was not to be congratulated on his ambassador's prudence; and, above all, Manners was to be warned of the interpretation which might be put upon his counsels, and disseminated thus publicly.