the business, after all, was not his own--began to follow out his train
of thought, in manner much as follows:

"This is that old Duncombe's writing--'Dunder-headed Duncombe,' as he
used to be called in his lifetime, but 'Long-headed Duncombe' afterward.
None but his wife knew whether he was a wise man, or a wiseacre. Perhaps
either, according to the treatment he received. Richard Yordas treated
him badly; that may have made him wiser. V. b. c. means 'vide box C,'
unless I am greatly mistaken. He wrote those letters as plainly and
clearly as he could against this power of appointment as recited here.
But afterward, with knife and pounce, he scraped them out, as now
becomes plain with this magnifying-glass; probably he did so when all
these archives, as he used to call them, were rudely ordered over to my
predecessor. A nice bit of revenge, if my suspicions are correct; and a
pretty confusion will follow it."

The lawyer's suspicions proved too correct. He took that box to his
private room, and with some trouble unlocked it. A damp and musty smell
came forth, as when a man delves a potato-bury; and then appeared layers
of parchment yellow and brown, in and out with one another, according to
the curing of the sheep-skin, perhaps, or the age of the sheep when
he began to die; skins much older than any man's who handled them, and
drier than the brains of any lawyer.

"Anno Jacobi tertio, and Quadragesimo Elisabethae! How nice it sounds!"
Mr. Jellicorse exclaimed; "they ought all to go in, and be charged for.
People to be satisfied with sixty years' title! Why, bless the Lord,
I am sixty-eight myself, and could buy and sell the grammar school at
eight years old. It is no security, no security at all. What did the
learned Bacupiston say--'If a rogue only lives to be a hundred and