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Celebrity, the Volume 01 by Winston Churchill
page 15 of 40 (37%)
transactions than I could have wished, and I trembled lest my own
witnesses should be turned against me. I learned more of Mr. Cooke's
great-uncle than I knew of Mr. Cooke himself, and to the credit of my
client be it said that none of his relative's traits were apparent in
him, with the possible exception of insanity; and that defect, if it
existed in the grand-nephew, took in him a milder and less criminal turn.
The old rascal, indeed, had so cleverly worded his deed of sale as to
obtain payment without transfer. It was a trifle easier to avoid being
specific in that country in his day than it is now, and the document was,
in my opinion, sufficiently vague to admit of a double meaning. The
original sale had been made to a man, now dead, whom the railroad had
bought out. The Copper Rise property was mentioned among the other lands
in the will in favor of Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, and the latter had
gone ahead improving them and increasing their output in spite of the
repeated threats of the railroad to bring suit. And it was not until its
present attorney had come in and investigated the title that the railroad
had resorted to the law. I mention here, by the way, that my client was
the sole heir.

But as the time of the sessions drew near, the outlook for me was
anything but bright. It is true that my witnesses were quite willing to
depose that his actions were queer and out of the common, but these
witnesses were for the most part venerable farmers and backwoodsmen:
expert testimony was deplorably lacking. In this extremity it was Mr.
Farquhar Fenelon Cooke himself who came unwittingly to my rescue. He had
bought a horse,--he could never be in a place long without one,--which
was chiefly remarkable, he said, for picking up his hind feet as well as
his front ones. However he may have differed from the ordinary run of
horses, he was shortly attacked by one of the thousand ills to which
every horse is subject. I will not pretend to say what it was. I found
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