Caleb Jennings, a shoemaker, cobler, snob—­using the last word in its genuine classical sense, and by no means according to the modern interpretation by which it is held to signify a genteel sneak or pretender—­he was anything but that—­occupied, some twelve or thirteen years ago, a stall at Watley, which, according to the traditions of the place, had been hereditary in his family for several generations.  He may also be said to have flourished there, after the manner of cobblers; for this, it must be remembered, was in the good old times, before the gutta-percha revolution had carried ruin and dismay into the stalls—­those of cobblers—­which in considerable numbers existed throughout the kingdom.  Like all his fraternity whom I have ever fallen in with or heard of, Caleb was a sturdy radical of the Major Cartwright and Henry Hunt school; and being withal industrious, tolerably skillful, not inordinately prone to the observance of Saint Mondays, possessed, moreover, of a neatly-furnished sleeping and eating apartment in the house of which the projecting first floor, supported on stone pillars, over-shadowed his humble work-place, he vaunted himself to be as really rich as an estated squire, and far more independent.

There was some truth in this boast, as the case which procured us the honor of Mr. Jennings’s acquaintance sufficiently proved.  We were employed to bring an action against a wealthy gentleman of the vicinity of Watley for a brutal and unprovoked assault he had committed, when in a state of partial inebriety, upon a respectable London tradesman who had visited the place on business.  On the day of trial our witnesses appeared to have become suddenly afflicted with an almost total loss of memory; and we were only saved from an adverse verdict by the plain, straight-forward evidence of Caleb, upon whose sturdy nature the various arts which soften or neutralize hostile evidence had been tried in vain.  Mr. Flint, who personally superintended the case, took quite a liking to the man; and it thus happened that we were called upon sometime afterwards to aid the said Caleb in extricating himself from the extraordinary and perplexing difficulty in which he suddenly and unwittingly found himself involved.

The projecting first floor of the house beneath which the humble work-shop of Caleb Jennings modestly disclosed itself, had been occupied for many years by an ailing and somewhat aged gentleman of the name of Lisle.  This Mr. Ambrose Lisle was a native of Watley, and had been a prosperous merchant of the city of London.  Since his return, after about twenty years’ absence, he had shut himself up in almost total seclusion, nourishing a cynical bitterness and acrimony of temper which gradually withered up the sources of health and life, till at length it became as visible to himself as it had for sometime been to others, that the oil of existence was expended, burnt up, and that but a few weak flickers more, and the ailing man’s plaints and griefs would be hushed in the dark silence of the grave.