The reader may possibly bear in mind that Mr. Titmouse had established his right to succeed to the Yatton property, then enjoyed by Mr. Aubrey, by making out to the satisfaction of the jury, on the trial at York, that he, the aforesaid Mr. Titmouse, was descended from an elder branch of the Aubrey family; that there had existed an unsuspected female descendant of Stephen Dreddlington, the elder brother of Geoffrey Dreddlington, through whom Mr. Aubrey derived his claim to the succession; and that this obscure female descendant had left issue equally obscure and unsuspected--viz. Gabriel Tittlebat Titmouse--to whom _our_ friend Titmouse was shown to be heir-at-law. In fact, it had been made out in open court, by clear and satisfactory evidence, _First_, that the aforesaid Gabriel Tittlebat Titmouse was the direct descendant, through the female line, of Stephen Dreddlington; _Secondly_, had been shown the marriage of Gabriel Tittlebat Titmouse; _Thirdly_, the birth of Tittlebat Titmouse, the first, and indeed the only issue of that marriage. All these were not only proved, but unquestionable facts; and from them, as far as _descent_ went, the preferable right of Titmouse to that of Aubrey, resulted as an inevitable inference, and the verdict went accordingly. But as soon as, owing to the happy and invaluable suggestion of the Attorney-General, a rigid inquiry had been instituted, _on the spot_, whence the oral and documentary evidence had been obtained by Mr. Gammon--an inquiry conducted by persons infinitely more familiar with such matters than common lawyers, those acute and indefatigable inquisitors succeeded in making the following remarkable discovery. It was found that the two old witnesses who had been called to prove that part of the case, on the trial, had since died--one of them very recently. But in pushing their inquiries, one or two other old witnesses were met with who had _not_ been called by Mr. Gammon, even if he had been aware of their existence; and one of these, an old man, while being closely interrogated upon another matter, happened to let fall some expressions which startled the person making minutes of the evidence; for he spoke of Mr. Titmouse's mother under three different names, _Gubbins_, _Oakley_, and _Johnson_. Now, the proof of the trial had been simply the marriage of Gabriel Tittlebat Titmouse, by bans, to Janet Johnson, _spinster_. Either, then, both the witnesses must be mistaken as to her having had other names, or there must be some strange mystery at the bottom of it--and so it at length turned out. This woman's maiden name had been Gubbins; then she had married a rope-maker, of the name of Oakley, in Staffordshire, but had separated from him, after two or three years' quarrelsome cohabitation, and gone into Yorkshire, where she had resided for some time with an aunt--in fact, no other person than old Blind Bess! She had subsequently become acquainted with Gabriel Tittlebat Titmouse; and to