course, the licence did not enable me to plead in court, as I was not
called to the Bar.

If work came I should now be in a fair way to attain independence.
But the prospect was by no means flattering; it was, in fact, all but
hopeless while the position of a special pleader was not my ambition.
The lookout, in fact, was anything but encouraging from the fifth
floor of _No. 3 Elm Court_--I mean prospectively. It was a region
not inaccessible, of course, but it looked on to a landscape of
chimney-pots, not one of which was likely to attract attorneys; it was
cheap and lonely, dull and miserable--a melancholy altitude beyond the
world and its companionship. Had I been of a melancholy disposition I
might have gone mad, for hope surely never came to a fifth floor. But
there I sat day by day, week by week, and month by month, waiting for
the knock that never came, hoping for the business that might never
come.

Hundreds of times did I listen with vain expectations to the footsteps
on the stairs below--footsteps of attorneys and clerks, messengers and
office-boys. I knew them all, and that was all I knew of them. Down
below at the bottom flight they tramped, and there they mostly
stopped. The ground floor was evidently the best for business; but
some came higher, to the first floor. That was a good position; there
were plenty of footsteps, and I could tell they were the footsteps of
clients. A few came a little higher still, and then my hopes rose
with the footsteps. Now some one had come up to the third floor: he
stopped! Alas! there was the knock, one single hard knock: it was a
junior clerk. The sound came all too soon for me, and I turned from my
own door to my little den and looked out of my window up into the sky,
from whence it seemed I might just as well expect a brief as from the