Podagra, who had settled in China; then a _Bill of Discovery_ filed on behalf of the Company; a _Cross Bill_ filed by Mr. Titmouse against the Company; a _Demurrer_ to the one, _Exceptions_ to the Answer, to the other.--Here, in short, was in truth "a very pretty quarrel." The stake was adequate; the Company rich; Mr. Titmouse eager; Gammon infuriate; and there was not the least chance of the thing being decided at all for three or four years to come; and poor Titmouse was thus not only kept out of a comfortable round sum of money, but obliged to carry on, all the while, an expensive and harassing litigation. So much for insuring with a Company which looks so sharply after the interests of _its shareholders_, in preference to those of the survivors of the dead insurers!--But as far as Titmouse and Gammon were concerned, it seemed a _dead lock_, and at a somewhat critical conjuncture too. CHAPTER VII. The sudden and unexpected rebuff encountered by Mr. Gammon, in the Vulture Insurance Company's refusal to pay the policy on the late Lady Stratton's life, was calculated seriously to embarrass his complicated movements. He foresaw the protracted and harassing course of litigation into which he should be driven, before he could compel them to liquidate so heavy a claim; and a glimpse of which, by way of anticipation, has been afforded to the reader; but, with all his long-headedness--his habitual contemplation of the probable and possible effects and consequences of whatever event happened to him--this refusal of the directors to pay the policy was attended with results which defied his calculations--results of such a description, and of such signal importance, as will perhaps surprise the reader, and serve to illustrate, in a striking manner, the controlling agency which is at work in the conduct of human affairs--an agency to which the principles of Mr. Gammon denied an existence. Nor was this the only trouble--the only reverse--which about this period occurred to him; and not a little perplexed was he to account for such a sudden confluence of adverse circumstances as he by-and-by experienced, when he found the truth of the King of Denmark's observation,-- "When sorrows come--they come not single spies, But IN BATTALIONS."[12] On applying at Doctor's Commons, in the ordinary way, for a grant, to Mr. Titmouse, of Letters of Administration to Lady Stratton, Mr. Gammon discovered the existence of a little document, for which he certainly was not entirely unprepared, but which, nevertheless, somewhat disconcerted him: principally on account of the additional plea it would afford the Vulture Company for resisting payment of the policy. How, indeed, could they be expected to pay a sum of such magnitude, to a person whose title to receive it was disputed by another claimant? The document alluded to was a CAVEAT, and ran thus:--