primogeniture. The
world had taken little interest in the private history of a lawyer, and
his sons having been born before his elevation to the bench, he passed
with the public for a widower, with a family of promising boys. Not one
in a hundred of his acquaintances even, suspected the fact; and nothing
would have been easier for him, than to have imposed on his brother, by
inducing him to make a will under some legal mystification or other, and
to have caused Tom Wychecombe to succeed to the property in question, by
an indisputable title. There would have been no great difficulty even,
in his son's assuming and maintaining his right to the baronetcy,
inasmuch as there would be no competitor, and the crown officers were
not particularly rigid in inquiring into the claims of those who assumed
a title that brought with it no political privileges. Still, he was far
from indulging in any such project. To him it appeared that the
Wychecombe estate ought to go with the principles that usually governed
such matters; and, although he submitted to the dictum of the common
law, as regarded the provision which excluded the half-blood from
inheriting, with the deference of an English common-law lawyer, he saw
and felt, that, failing the direct line, Wychecombe ought to revert to
the descendants of Sir Michael by his second son, for the plain reason
that they were just as much derived from the person who had acquired the
estate, as his brother Wycherly and himself. Had there been descendants
of females, even, to interfere, no such opinion would have existed; but,
as between an escheat, or a devise in favour of a _filius nillius_, or
of the descendant of a _filius nullius_, the half-blood possessed every
possible advantage. In his legal eyes, legitimacy was everything,
although he had not hesitated to be the means of bringing into the world
seven illegitimate children, that being the precise number Martha had
the credit of having borne him, though three only survived. After
reflecting a moment, therefore, he turned to the baronet, and addressed
him more seriously than he had yet done, in the present dialogue; first
taking a draught of cordial to give him strength for the occasion.

"Listen to me, brother Wycherly," said the judge, with a gravity that at
once caught the attention of the other. "You know something of the
family history, and I need do no more than allude to it. Our ancestors
were the knightly possessors of Wychecombe,