LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2366, 2 November 1881, Page 4

LITERATURE.

TOUCH-AND-GO WITH A GREAT ESTATE. (" London Society.”) ( Concluded.) Had he gone crazed ? But I did not think of that then. The possibility of crime was more in my mind. I went np to him and brought my hand down heavily between his shoulders. ‘What the devil,’ I cried out, ‘are you doing here 1 ’ Host decidedly I meant to startle him. But I could not possibly startle him more than he had startled me, when I found out who it was that had been, night after night, engaged alone in an office which he could not possibly have been able to enter without false keys, or with an honest cause. He could not even have practised my mode of entry without false keys, because I had had to unlock my own room door, and had not had to unlock my father’s. And he of all men — too much of a blockhead even to be a rogue, as I had imagined until now. But though it was natural for him to be lees startled than I, he did not seem to be startled at all. On the contrary, he merely turned round and faosd me with the saddest, most hopeless look I had ever seen.

‘ I did not expect you,’ was all he said, ‘ But it does not matter now. ’

‘ Not matter ? ’ said I. * Not matter, that I find my father’s office broken into, night after night, by one of his own clerks ; not matter, that I find you cut in what amounts to burglary ? If you have anything to say for yourself, say it ; if net, I shall know what to believe, and make a proper search for an explanation, both here and elsewhere.’

‘ I have nothing to say, Mr Key,’ said he. ‘ Of couraa I shall not appear in yonr office again. ’ ‘ I could have told you that myself,’ said I. * Then you have nothing to say ? Well, my father must decide what to do with you. I know what I should do. ’ I was not keeping my temper, I own. ‘I suppose I ought’nt to cross-examine you, but X must either do that or send for the police, it seems to me. And for yonr mother’s sake I should like to avoid that. If I can.’ ‘Then—then I will tell you,’ said he. • Perhaps, perhaps, I have done what a lawyer, a more lawyer like yourself, would call wrong, technically wrong. 2 am not a mere lawyer, Mr Key.’ ‘ A mere lawyer ? I never knew you were a lawyer at all,’ said I. ‘ But unluckily it is mere lawyers who have to define burglary, and— ’

* 1 am not a burglar ! ' said Must, showing a little spirit for the first time. ‘ I have been here every night, that is true. It was the only time at which 7 could have sufficient access to your father’s room. But my means of access were not what you suppose. I never used to leave the premises—that is all. Before the hour for closing I used to hide in that closet which your father’s absence from the office made it perfectly easy for mo to do. Mr Merrit and the clerks used to think I had gone away for the day. Your father’s room door was never really looked, for I suppose it was forgotten either when he was taken ill or else when you went away, and nobody ever thought of it afterwards, not even Mr Merrit, though he used to find the door unlocked whenever ho came at night. It’s curious what stupid people some lawyers are. Just because it was sucposed not to want locking at the right time, nobody seemed to think it odd that it was founu unlocked at the wrong one. No mere metaphysician would have made such a blunder as that, Mr Key. I uaod to think it hacky. It enabled mo to bo found at my own desk when the clerks came In the morning. I used to keep food in tho coal-scuttle. Vou’il find some there still. You’re welcome to it. It’s no uao to me any more. And now I’ve told you the whale sfcorv.’

* Von have told me nothing, sir I 5 said I. ‘ What possessed you— ’ I really did not know what to ask. He had spoken in such a forlorn, dreary, strangely cynical way that I began to suspect, not a crime, but —at iast —sheer lunacy. Idlotoy would be parfectiy natural in the young man. ‘ Very well, Mr Key. There was a document which it was necessary —at least I

thought bo—that I should examine. To your eyes it waa only an old Latin sermon, or essay, about the virtues of somo miserable saint or other of the Middle Ages. j had reason to think —reason which I should vainly try to make you understand —that it might, nay, must, ho a palimpsest : perhaps even the word is strange to you. And yet even you, Mr Key, must havo heard that some of our most precious classics have been lost by being erased and over-written with worthle-s monkish chronicles ; but that many have been rooovoied, in our own times, by chemically removing the monkish stuff, and, by a ro-agent, restoring tho old writing so as to bo legible again. I had reason to thick, from certain partial experiments I had already tried, that this absurd puff of St. Willibrod covered—well, nothing less than some portions of tho lost books of Livy. I need not go through the course of reasoning that led mo to that conclusion. Enough that tho reasons were oonnd_; and, after all, in such matters instinct and insight are the best of all reasons. Certainty must always depend upon something higher than mere evidence, Mr Key, which can never amount to proof, however strong it may bo. It is only failh whiah can ever bo sure. And so—’

‘ And so yon believed, because you wished to believe, that yon will find Livy in a lawyer’s office in Bnrghatn. Why didn’t you say so before ?’ 1 Because I didn’t choose to bo called mad by mere people of common sense, like you and your father, until I could come to you and say, “ Soo here!” And now I say, “See here; see tho result of disappointed faith, and of labor in vain.” Yen are right. lam good for nothing. I am an bss and a fool.’

I began to see at last with what sort of a man I had to deal. *So yon found nothing ?’ said I.

‘ Worse than nothing. Look here,’ he said, uncovering the pasohment that lay before him, and which was, indeed, the old i aim manuscript which my father had thrown into a drawer to keep this queer sort of a clerk from wasting his time j as if a fanatic of any sort, and not only a lover, will fiud out tho way. ‘Yes, that monk, whoever it was was not so bad es some of them. He only used an old deed to scrawl over; if a man must write rubbish, ho can't do better than use rubbish to write it on.’ * An old deed of the tiroes of the monks? But that must be a curiosity in its way, after nil. What is it? That old writing beats me.’ ‘ I don’t know. I didn’t caro to recover more than enough to show mo that I had thrown all my lab r away. It you care to know, it seems like the record of a conveyance, by tho corporation of Burgh am to the priory of Wolwood, of the Campus de Easton, in the parish of St. Botolph intra muros et terminos de Burgham; which means “within the walls and bounds." I have read no more. And enough, too.’ ‘ Quite enough,’ said I. ‘Go homo and go to bed : of course I must speak to my father about you, though the affair, I am glad to say, doesn’t look as I feared.’ I locked up carefully enough this time, let myself and Diek Musty out by the same way I bad entered, no as not to disturb tho housekeeper, and carried the old parchment home with me to show my father. It was of no practical use ; but it certainly waa, or might be of interest to local antiquarians. It waa remarkable, any way, that the document should have remained in the custody of the parsons of St. Michael’s as it must have done, ever since the days before the Reformation ; but certain old documents have a wonderful way of escaping the doom of waste paper, to which things of more value are so perilously liable. An cld invitation to a long-eaten dinner will survive under circumstances in which an important receipt will prove mysteriously and hopelessly missing. But nothing of all this could possibly affect the miserable case of which my mind was full. I forgot, or rather did not even trouble to remember, to mention the matter to my father, after all. Ho had too much on his mind to be troubled about Dick Musty, fir whom I now felt rather pity than anger, inexcusable as his conduct had been.

I remember, as well as any in ray life, the day when my father at last decided, finally, that fighting would be worse than folly, and that the Brambles must go to Mr Horace Jones. Mr Evelyn Yiner had been talking everything over with us—not that there was much left to talk about—and had stayed to dine. He took things well, I must »ay. Instead of losing his appetite, he talked about what chance* he would have if he wont to the Bar, and wonld even go back to the great question now that it had been settled for gor’d and all. He made all sorts of talk for everybody ; and presently, in an incidental way, we got upon local matters, and one of us mentioned the singularity of the name of that churcbless parish, ‘ 't, Botolph in Turn.’ We all made guesses at its origin, and at last 1 said, ‘ I think it must mean St. Botolph inTernus, or in Terminibus, or within the walls or boundaries of the town.’

‘By Jove,’said my father, ‘it might be 1 But I didn’t know you were such a scholar as that, Tom. How did you get hold of that idea ? St. Botolph in Turn is within the town boundaries ; so much is true.’

• I’m afraid I can’t claim the guess as quite original,’ said I.' ‘ Oddly enough, I got it from an old deed that was amongst old Parson Evans’s papers, which I’ve got upstairs, and will show you if you like, as it seems curious in its way. I’ll tell you tae whole story ; but not now.’ I brought the half-deciphered document out of my bedroom, which my father recognised at once as the parchment he had takeu from Dick Musty. We looked at it in the manner of the very unskilled archeologists that we were

‘How odd!’ oaid Mr Evelyn Yiner, ‘Campus de Easton means Easton Field, the other name for the Brambbs. A curious accident, indeed.’ ‘And the Bramplcs is still rated to St, Botolph,’ said I. I wished I had not brought down the document, after all. But Mr Evelyn Yiner spoke as If It mattered nothing to him, I believe in his heart ho was fool enough to be half glad that Miss Margaret was to come to him poor, so that he might work for her. ‘ Tom, ’ said my fathe -, ‘ this document is really a curiosity. I must show it to the Mayor, and we’ll have the rest of it made oat when we’ve got nothing else to do. It’s odd I never noticed there was anything of the sort about this deed. But I remember, it whs tho day I was taken ill. It shows how careful a town ought to be about preserving the evidence of its boundaries. The nature of the ownership of the Brambles has always happened, yon see, to make it perfectly immaterial whether that part of St. Botolph lay within or without the town ; and Mr Wilfred Jones voted as a freeman. This old document may prove important evidence of town rights in time to come. Why—but—great Heaven !’ he suddenly cried out, starting from his chair. X thought he had bean seized with a sudden fit, and was about to fall. Mr Vinor also started towards him; and, in truth, there looked reason for alarm, considering his recent illness and his chronio worry about the Brambles, and his apoplectic flush, and his vain eflorta to apeak a word. But at last he waved us away from him, and fell baok aga'n into his chair. Then he raised his fist and brought it down upon tho old Latin sermon with a bang that made the glasses ring. Hurrah I ’ he shouted. ‘ Three cheers for Miss Peggy, and a fig for Mr Horate Jones ! ’

Had he gone mad after all ? « Tom ! Has thf.re been a single case of the Brambles paasi' g to the heir-at-law of an intestate within tho memory of the law f ’

• No,’ said I * How could there be —till now—when It belonged to a college till it was bought by Mr John Jones ? Bat—don’t yon feel well ? ' « Well ? Tom, don’t you ha a fool I Then there’s been continuous custom—continuous custom, because there hasn’t been the possibility of a breach —’ • What breach ? What custom ? I could only look at Mr Yiner In despair, and think what I could do, with my father going out of his senses before my eyes.

«Is the Brambles In Burgham or no ?’ < Surely, sir, if that document is to be believed.* »it if to be believed. It is legal proof, and preof in good custody, sir; and uncontradicted and uncontradiotable by all the Horace Joneses in the habitable globe 1 Tho Brambles is in Burgham. And what is the tenure of the lands in Burgham ? You—a Burgham lawyer—don’t know ? ’

* Then I'll tell yon, and I’m ashamed of yon! It’s Borough English, sir! And, by the custom of Borough English, all lands and tenements within the Bounds of Burgham go to the youngest son, instead of tho eldest, when there’s no will I ’ I need not carry the history of the case farther than by raying that the strange old custom of Borough English, which still prevails in other places than Burgham, and the origin of which has defL d theory to discover, effectually disinherited Mr Horace Jones simply because he was hla father’s eldest son, and gave the Brambles to Miss Margaret because she was the heiress of the youngest son of old John Jones. I have told my story; but only because I think it strange enough to be worth the telling It has a moral for * mere lawyers ’ like myself, and it is this. Don’t think Practice everything, and Learning nothing. England is a curious country, and the Middle Ages take a long time to kill. As for poor Dick Musty, through whom — by no means through any merit of his own —it had come out that the Brambles had never ceased to be a part of the ancient Borough of Burgham, Mr and Mrs Viner could not see that he waa undeserving of a most unreasonable and disproportionate reward. Learning from my father and myself his complete unfitness for the law. they sent him back to Cambridge, where he got his degree and a fellowship and settled down »t last into a happily useless member of society, not without some reputation as an authority on palimpsests and doubtful readings. I suppose he Is as dead as Livy by this time, seeing how long ago all this happened. Everything ended rightly; but even now I almost tremble when I think how that Great Estate hung upon such a mere ‘ Touch-ond-Go ’