ook the cobbler gave him.

'Just this,' replied the cobbler; 'an old gentleman that I worked for,
down in the country, and a humble relation of whose I married--she's
dead, God bless her, and thank Him for it!--was seized with a fit and
went off.'

'Where?' inquired Sam, who was growing sleepy after the numerous events
of the day.

'How should I know where he went?' said the cobbler, speaking through
his nose in an intense enjoyment of his pipe. 'He went off dead.'

'Oh, that indeed,' said Sam. 'Well?'

'Well,' said the cobbler, 'he left five thousand pound behind him.'

'And wery gen-teel in him so to do,' said Sam.

'One of which,' continued the cobbler, 'he left to me, 'cause I married
his relation, you see.'

'Wery good,' murmured Sam.

'And being surrounded by a great number of nieces and nevys, as was
always quarrelling and fighting among themselves for the property, he
makes me his executor, and leaves the rest to me in trust, to divide it
among 'em as the will prowided.'

'Wot do you mean by leavin' it on trust?' inquired Sam, waking up a
little. 'If it ain't ready-money, were's the use on it?'

'It's a law term, that's all,' said the cobbler.

'I don't think that,' said Sam, shaking his head. 'There's wery little
trust at that shop. Hows'ever, go on.' 'Well,' said the cobbler, 'when
I was going to take out a probate of the will, the nieces and nevys,
who was desperately disappointed at not getting all the money, enters a
caveat against it.' 'What's that?' inquired Sam.

'A legal instrument, which is as much as to say, it's no go,' replied
the cobbler.

'I see,' said Sam, 'a sort of brother-in-law o' the have-his-carcass.
Well.'

'But,' continued the cobbler, 'finding that they couldn't agree among
themselves, and consequently couldn't get up a case against the will,
they withdrew the caveat, and I paid all the legacies. I'd hardly done
it, when one nevy brings an action to set the will aside. The case comes
on, some months afterwards, afore a deaf old gentleman, in a back room
somewhere down by Paul's Churchyard; and arter four counsels had taken a
day a-piece to bother him regularly, he takes a week or two to consider,
and read the evidence in six volumes, and then gives his judgment that
how the testator was not quite right in his head, and I must pay all the
money back again, and all the costs. I appealed; the case come on before
three or four very sleepy gentlemen, who had heard it al