ter the manner of cobblers; for
this, it must be remembered, was in the good old times, before the
gutta-percha revolution had carried ruin and dismay into the
stalls--those of cobblers--which in considerable numbers existed
throughout the kingdom. Like all his fraternity whom I have ever fallen
in with or heard of, Caleb was a sturdy radical of the Major Cartwright
and Henry Hunt school; and being withal industrious, tolerably skillful,
not inordinately prone to the observance of Saint Mondays, possessed,
moreover, of a neatly-furnished sleeping and eating apartment in the
house of which the projecting first floor, supported on stone pillars,
over-shadowed his humble work-place, he vaunted himself to be as really
rich as an estated squire, and far more independent.

There was some truth in this boast, as the case which procured us the
honor of Mr. Jennings's acquaintance sufficiently proved. We were
employed to bring an action against a wealthy gentleman of the vicinity
of Watley for a brutal and unprovoked assault he had committed, when in a
state of partial inebriety, upon a respectable London tradesman who had
visited the place on business. On the day of trial our witnesses appeared
to have become suddenly afflicted with an almost total loss of memory;
and we were only saved from an adverse verdict by the plain,
straight-forward evidence of Caleb, upon whose sturdy nature the various
arts which soften or neutralize hostile evidence had been tried in vain.
Mr. Flint, who personally superintended the case, took quite a liking to
the man; and it thus happened that we were called upon sometime
afterwards to aid the said Caleb in extricating himself from the
extraordinary and perplexing difficulty in which he suddenly and
unwittingly found himself involved.

The projecting first floor of the house beneath which the humble
work-shop of Caleb Jennings modestly disclosed itself, had been occupied
for many years by an ailing and somewhat aged gentleman of the name of
Lisle. This Mr. Ambrose Lisle was a native of Watley, and had been a
prosperous merchant of the city of London. Since his return, after about
twenty years' absence, he had shut himself up in almost total seclusion,
nourishing a cynical bitterness and acrimony of temper which gradually
withered up the sources of health and life, till at length it became as
visible to himself as it had for sometime been to others, that the oil of
existence was expended, burnt up,