row, half an hour sooner. There's plenty
more; there's no end to it.'

Mr Venus expressed his acknowledgments and accepted the invitation.

'It's wonderful what's been hid, at one time and another,' said Mr
Boffin, ruminating; 'truly wonderful.'

'Meaning sir,' observed Wegg, with a propitiatory face to draw him out,
and with another peg at his friend and brother, 'in the way of money?'

'Money,' said Mr Boffin. 'Ah! And papers.'

Mr Wegg, in a languid transport, again dropped over on Mr Venus, and
again recovering himself, masked his emotions with a sneeze.

'Tish-ho! Did you say papers too, sir? Been hidden, sir?'

'Hidden and forgot,' said Mr Boffin. 'Why the bookseller that sold me
the Wonderful Museum--where's the Wonderful Museum?' He was on his knees
on the floor in a moment, groping eagerly among the books.

'Can I assist you, sir?' asked Wegg.

'No, I have got it; here it is,' said Mr Boffin, dusting it with the
sleeve of his coat. 'Wollume four. I know it was the fourth wollume,
that the bookseller read it to me out of. Look for it, Wegg.'

Silas took the book and turned the leaves.

'Remarkable petrefaction, sir?'

'No, that's not it,' said Mr Boffin. 'It can't have been a
petrefaction.'

'Memoirs of General John Reid, commonly called The Walking Rushlight,
sir? With portrait?'

'No, nor yet him,' said Mr Boffin.

'Remarkable case of a person who swallowed a crown-piece, sir?'

'To hide it?' asked Mr Boffin.

'Why, no, sir,' replied Wegg, consulting the text, 'it appears to have
been done by accident. Oh! This next must be it. "Singular discovery of
a will, lost twenty-one years."'

'That's it!' cried Mr Boffin. 'Read that.'

'"A most extraordinary case,"' read Silas Wegg aloud, '"was tried at
the last Maryborough assizes in Ireland. It was briefly this. Robert
Baldwin, in March 1782, made his will, in which he devised the lands now
in question, to the children of his youngest son; soon after which his
faculties failed him, and he became altogether childish and died, above
eighty years old. The defendant, the eldest son, immediately afterwards
gave out that his father had destroyed the will; and no will being
found, he entered into possession of the lands in question, and so
matters remained for twenty-one years, the whole family during all
that time believing that the father had died without a will. But after
twenty-one years the defendant's wife died, and he very soon afterwards,
at