word about it till he was well off—­you understand?  Ha! ha!—­ho! ho!” again burst out Mr. Linden.  “I pity the poor creditors though!  Bless you!  I shouldn’t have had it at anything like the price, only for his knowing that I was not likely to be running about exposing the affair, by asking lawyers whether an estate in a family’s possession, as this was in Dursley’s for three hundred years, had a good title or not.  So be careful not to drop a word, even to Tom—­for my honor’s sake.  A delicious bargain, and no mistake!  Worth, if a penny, seventy thousand pounds.  Ha! ha!—­ho! ho!”

“Then you have really parted with that enormous sum of money without having had the title to the estate professionally examined?”

“Title!  Fiddlestick!  I looked over the deeds myself.  Besides, haven’t I told you the ancestors of Dursley, from whose executors Palliser purchased the estate, were in possession of it for centuries.  What better title than prescription can there be?”

“That may be true enough; but still”—­

“I ought, you think, to have risked losing the bargain by delay, and have squandered time and money upon fellows in horse-hair wigs, in order to ascertain what I sufficiently well knew already?  Pooh!  I am not in my second childhood yet!”

It was useless to argue with him; besides the mischief, if mischief there was, had been done, and the not long-delayed entrance of the young couple necessitating a change of topic, I innocently inquired what he thought of the Negro Emancipation Bill which Mr. Stanley, as the organ of the ministry, had introduced a few evenings previously? and was rewarded by a perfect deluge of loquacious indignation and invective—­during a pause in which hurly-burly of angry words I contrived to effect my escape.

“Crowther & Jenkins!” exclaimed one morning, Mr. Flint, looking up from the “Times” newspaper he held in his hand.  “Crowther & Jenkins!—­what is it we know about Crowther & Jenkins?”

The question was addressed to me, and I, like my partner, could not at the moment precisely recall why those names sounded upon our ears with a certain degree of interest as well as familiarity.  “Crowther & Jenkins!” I echoed.  “True; what do we know about Crowther & Jenkins?  Oh, I have it!—­they are the executors of a will under which young Linden’s pretty bride, that is to be, inherits her fortune.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Flint, as he put down the paper, and looked me gravely in the face—­“I remember now; their names are in the list of bankrupts.  A failure in the gambling corn-trade too.  I hope they have not been speculating with the young woman’s money.”

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Mr. Linden was announced, and presently in walked that gentleman in a state of considerable excitement.

“I told you,” he began, “some time ago about Crowther & Jenkins being the persons in whose names Catherine Arnold’s money stood in the funds?”