l of attracting the attention of
long-headed people, as not likely to have been thrown in for nothing,
(and therefore requiring to be borne in mind with a view to subsequent
explanation,) have been entirely overlooked or forgotten. However this
may be, I can fancy that the sort of reader whom I have in my eye, as
one whose curiosity it is worth some pains to excite, and sustain, has
more than once asked himself the following question, viz.--

How did Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap, first come to be acquainted
with the precarious tenure by which Mr. Aubrey held the Yatton
property?--Why, it chanced in this wise.

Mr. Parkinson of Grilston, who has been already introduced to the
reader, had succeeded to his father's first-rate business as a country
attorney and solicitor in Yorkshire. He was a highly honorable,
painstaking man, and deservedly enjoyed the entire confidence of all
his numerous and influential clients. Some twelve years before the
period at which this history commences, he had, from pure kindness,
taken into his service an orphan boy of the name of Steggars, at first
merely as a sort of errand-boy, and to look after the office. He soon,
however, displayed so much sharpness, and acquitted himself so
creditably in anything that he happened to be concerned in, a little
above the run of his ordinary duties, that in the course of a year or
two he became a sort of clerk, and sat and wrote at the desk it had
formerly been his sole province to dust. Higher and higher did he rise,
in process of time, in his master's estimation; and at length became
quite a _factotum_--as such, acquainted with the whole course of
business that passed through the office. Many interesting matters
connected with the circumstances and connections of the neighboring
nobility and gentry were thus constantly brought under his notice, and
now and then set him thinking whether the knowledge thus acquired could
not, in some way, and at some time or another, be turned to his own
advantage; for I am sorry to say that he was utterly unworthy of the
kindness and confidence of Mr. Parkinson, who little thought that in
Steggars he had to deal with--a rogue in grain. Such being his
character, and such his opportunities, this worthy had long made a
practice of minuting down, from time to time, anything of interest or
importance in the affairs of his betrayed master's clients--even
laboriously copying long documents, when he thought them of importance