The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121,
November, 1867, by Various

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867

Author: Various

Release Date: March 9, 2009 [EBook #28285]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***

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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._

VOL. XX.--NOVEMBER, 1867.--NO. CXXI.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
to the end of the article.

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.

CHAPTER XXXI.

MASTER BYLES GRIDLEY CONSULTS WITH JACOB PENHALLOW, ESQUIRE.

Lawyer Penhallow was seated in his study, his day's work over, his feet
in slippers, after the comfortable but inelegant fashion which Sir
Walter Scott reprobates, amusing himself with a volume of old Reports.
He was a knowing man enough, a keen country lawyer, but honest, and
therefore less ready to suspect the honesty of others. He had a great
belief in his young partner's ability, and, though he knew him to be
astute, did not think him capable of roguery.

It was at his request that Mr. Bradshaw had undertaken his journey,
which, as he believed,--and as Mr. Bradshaw had still stronger evidence
of a strictly confidential nature which led him to feel sure,--would end
in the final settlement of the great land claim in favor of their
client. The case had been dragging along from year to year, like an
English chancery suit; and while courts and lawyers and witnesses had
been sleeping, the property had been steadily growing. A railroad had
passed close to one margin of the township, some mines had been opened
in the county, in which a village calling itself a city had grown big
enough to have a ne