thousand pounds of that young scant-grace and spendthrift,
Palliser--fifteen thousand pounds less than what it cost him, with the
outlay he has made upon it. Signed, sealed, delivered, paid for
yesterday. Ha! ha! ho! Leave John Linden alone for a bargain! It's worth
seventy thousand pounds if it's worth a shilling. I say," continued he,
after a renewed spasm of exuberant mirth, "not a word about it to
anybody--mind! I promised Palliser, who is quietly packing up to be off
to Italy, or Australia, or Constantinople, or the devil--all of them,
perhaps, in succession--not to mention a word about it till he was well
off--you understand? Ha! ha!--ho! ho!" again burst out Mr. Linden. "I
pity the poor creditors though! Bless you! I shouldn't have had it at
anything like the price, only for his knowing that I was not likely to be
running about exposing the affair, by asking lawyers whether an estate in
a family's possession, as this was in Dursley's for three hundred years,
had a good title or not. So be careful not to drop a word, even to
Tom--for my honor's sake. A delicious bargain, and no mistake! Worth, if
a penny, seventy thousand pounds. Ha! ha!--ho! ho!"

"Then you have really parted with that enormous sum of money without
having had the title to the estate professionally examined?"

"Title! Fiddlestick! I looked over the deeds myself. Besides, haven't I
told you the ancestors of Dursley, from whose executors Palliser
purchased the estate, were in possession of it for centuries. What better
title than prescription can there be?"

"That may be true enough; but still"--

"I ought, you think, to have risked losing the bargain by delay, and have
squandered time and money upon fellows in horse-hair wigs, in order to
ascertain what I sufficiently well knew already? Pooh! I am not in my
second childhood yet!"

It was useless to argue with him; besides the mischief, if mischief there
was, had been done, and the not long-delayed entrance of the young couple
necessitating a change of topic, I innocently inquired what he thought of
the Negro Emancipation Bill which Mr. Stanley, as the organ of the
ministry, had introduced a few evenings previously? and was rewarded by a
perfect deluge of loquacious indignation and invective--during a pause in
which hurly-burly of angry words I contrived to effect my escape.

"Crowther & Jenkins!" exclaimed one morning, Mr. Flint, looking up from
the "Times" newspaper he held in his hand. "Crow