of Brandon, minor--Dorcas Brandon, his own cousin. There was a
complicated cousinship among these Brandons, Wylders, and
Lakes--inextricable intermarriages, which, five years ago, before I
renounced the bar, I had at my fingers' ends, but which had now relapsed
into haze. There must have been some damnable taint in the blood of the
common ancestor--a spice of the insane and the diabolical. They were an
ill-conditioned race--that is to say, every now and then there emerged a
miscreant, with a pretty evident vein of madness. There was Sir Jonathan
Brandon, for instance, who ran his own nephew through the lungs in a duel
fought in a paroxysm of Cencian jealousy; and afterwards shot his
coachman dead upon the box through his coach-window, and finally died in
Vienna, whither he had absconded, of a pike-thrust received from a sentry
in a brawl.

The Wylders had not much to boast of, even in contrast with that wicked
line. They had produced their madmen and villains, too; and there had
been frequent intermarriages--not very often happy. There had been many
lawsuits, frequent disinheritings, and even worse doings. The Wylders of
Brandon appear very early in history; and the Wylder arms, with their
legend, 'resurgam,' stands in bold relief over the great door of Brandon
Hall. So there were Wylders of Brandon, and Brandons of Brandon. In one
generation, a Wylder ill-using his wife and hating his children, would
cut them all off, and send the estate bounding back again to the
Brandons. The next generation or two would amuse themselves with a
lawsuit, until the old Brandon type reappeared in some bachelor brother
or uncle, with a Jezebel on his left hand, and an attorney on his right,
and, presto! the estates were back again with the Wylders.

A 'statement of title' is usually a dry affair. But that of the dynasty
of Brandon Hall was a truculent romance. Their very 'wills' were spiced