John Linden gradually recovered; and as soon as it was deemed prudent to do so, we informed him that the niece was not dead, as the plaintiff in the action of ejectment had supposed, and that of course, if she could now be persuaded to ratify the imperative consent she had formerly subscribed, he might retain Holmford.  At first he received the intelligence as a gleam of light and hope, but he soon relapsed into doubt and gloom.  “What chance was there,” he hopelessly argued, “that, holding the legal power, she would not exercise it?” It was not, he said, in human nature to do otherwise; and he commissioned us to make liberal offers for a compromise.  Half—­he would be content to lose half his purchase-money; even a greater sacrifice than that he would agree to—­anything, indeed, that would not be utter ruin—­that did not involve utter beggary and destitution in old age.

Three days after this conversation, I announced to him that the lady and her husband were below and desirous of seeing him.

“What do they say?” he eagerly demanded.  “Will they accept of half—­two-thirds?  What do they say?”

“I cannot precisely tell you.  They wish to see you alone, and you can urge your own views and offers.”  He trembled violently, and shrank nervously back as I placed my hand on the door-handle of the private office.  He presently recovered in some degree his self-possession, passed in, and I withdrew from the humiliating, but salutary spectacle, of obdurate tyrant-power compelled to humble itself before those whom it had previously scorned and trampled upon.

The legal arrangements which Flint and I had suggested were effected, and Linden, senior, accompanied by his son, daughter-in-law, and Mrs. Arnold, set off in restored amity for Holmford House.  Edwin Majoribanks abandoned his action, and Palliser, finding that matters were satisfactorily arranged, retired to England.  We afterwards knew that he had discovered the defect of title, on applying to a well-known conveyancer, to raise a considerable sum by way of mortgage, and that his first step was to threaten legal proceedings against Crowther & Jenkins for the recovery of his money; but a hint he obtained of the futility of proceedings against them, determined him to offer the estate at a low figure to Linden, relying upon that gentleman’s ostentatious contempt of lawyers that the blot in the title, subjected only to his own common-sense spectacles, would not be perceived.

THE CHEST OF DRAWERS.

I am about to relate a rather curious piece of domestic history, some of the incidents of which, revealed at the time of their occurrence in contemporary law reports, may be in the remembrance of many readers.  It took place in one of the midland counties, and at a place which I shall call Watley; the names of the chief actors who figured in it must also, to spare their modesty of their blushes, as the case may be, be changed; and should one of those persons, spite of these precautions, apprehend unpleasant recognition, he will be able to console himself with the reflection, that all I state beyond that which may be gathered from the records of the law courts will be generally ascribed to the fancy or invention of the writer.  And it is as well, perhaps, that it should be so.