and her feet in cashmere house-boots, very warm
and cosy, on the brass fender; and she had got port wine and sherry
wine in the two decanters that was never out of the glass-fronted
chiffonier when master was alive; and there was something else in a
black bottle; and opposite her, in the best arm-chair that old
master had sat in to the last, was that lawyer, Sigglesfield from
Lewes. And when we all came in, one after another, rather slow, and
bringing the cold air with us, they sat in their chairs as if they
had been struck, and looked at us.

Harry and John was in front, as was right; and in the dusk they
could hardly see who was behind.

'And what do you want, young men?' says Mrs. Blake, standing up in
her crape, and her white cap, and looking very handsome, Harry said
afterwards, though, for my part, I never could see it; and, as she
stood up, she caught sight of the clergyman from London, and she
shrank back into her chair and covered her face with her hands; and
the clergyman stepped into the room, none of us having the least
idea of what he was going to say, and said he--

'That's the woman that I married on the 7th; and that's the man I
married her to!' said he, pointing to Sigglesfield, who seemed to
turn twice as small, and his ferret eyes no better than button-hole
slits.

'That!' said our parson; 'why, that's Mr. Sigglesfield, the
solicitor from Lewes.'

'Then the lady opposite is Mrs. Sigglesfield, that's all,' said the
parson from London.

'What I want to know,' says Harry, 'is--is this my house or hers?
It's plain she wasn't my father's wife. But yet he left it to her in
the will.'

'Slowly, old boy!' said John; 'gently does it. How could he have
left anything in a will to his wife when he hadn't got any wife?
Why, that fellow there---'

But here Mrs. Blake got on her feet, and I must say for the woman,
if she hadn't got anything else she had got pluck.

'The game's up!' she says. 'It was well played, too, though I says
it. And you, you old fool!' she says to the parson, 'you have often
drunk tea with me, and gone away thinking how well-mannered I was,
and what a nice woman Mrs. Blake was, and how well she knew her
place, after you had chatted over half your parish with me. I know
you are the curiousest man in it, and as you and me is old friends,
I don't mind owning up just to please you. It'll save a lot of time
and a lot of money.'

'It's my duty to warn you,' said John, 'that anything