prepared for his admiring clients, had been held "totally ineffectual and void both at law and in equity." I say, Mr. Frankpledge's note was to that effect; for so ingeniously had he framed it--so effectually concealed his retreat beneath a little cloud of contradictory authorities, like as the ink-fish, they say, eludeth its pursuers--that his clients cursed the law, not their draftsman; and, moreover, by prudently withholding the _name_ of the "late case," he, at all events for a while, had prevented their observing that it was _senior_ to some eight or ten cases which (indefatigable man!) he had culled for them out of the legal garden, and arrayed on the back of his draft. Slightly disconcerted were Messrs. Quirk and Gammon, it may be believed, at this new view of the "result of the authorities." "Mortmain is always right!" said Quirk, looking hard at Gammon; who observed simply that one day Frankpledge would be as old as Mortmain then was--by which time (thought he) I also know where--please God--_you_ will be, my old friend, if there's any truth in the Scriptures! In this pleasant frame of mind were the partners, when the impudent apparition of Huckaback presented itself, in the manner which has been described. Huckaback's commentary upon the disgusting text of Titmouse over-night, (as a lawyer would say, in analogy to a well-known term, "Coke upon Littleton,") produced an effect upon their minds which may be easily imagined. It was while their minds were under these two soothing influences, _i. e._ of the insolence of Huckaback and the vacillation of Frankpledge, that Mr. Gammon had penned the note to Titmouse, (surely, under the circumstances, one of extraordinary temper and forbearance,) which had occasioned him the agonies I have been attempting faintly to describe;--and that Quirk, summoning Snap into the room, had requested him to give orders for denial to Titmouse if he should again make his appearance at the office; which injunction Snap forthwith delivered in the clerk's room, in a tone and manner that were a very model of the _imperative mood_. A day or two afterwards, Mr. Quirk, (who was a man that stuck like a limpet to a rock to any point which occurred to him,) in poring over that page in the fourth volume of _Blackstone's Commentaries_, where were to be found the passages which have been already quoted, (and which both Quirk and Gammon had long had off by heart,) as he sat one day at dinner, at home, whither he had taken the volume in question, fancied he had at last hit upon a notable crotchet, which, the more he thought of, the more he was struck with; determining to pay a visit in the morning to Mr. Mortmain. The spark of light that had twinkled till it kindled in the tinder of his mind, was struck by his hard head out of the following sentence of the text in question:--