Launce Keymer was a good-looking young fellow, with an insinuating manner and a plausible tongue. Being possessed of so many advantages, it was scarcely to be wondered at that he was extremely popular among the marriageable young ladies of St. Oswyth’s and its neighbourhood. He was the son of a local brewer, and assisted his father in the business. He had been spoiled and indulged while young, and, as an only son, had been allowed a free rein in his extravagances. But, with a second family growing up, and an expensive wife half his own age, the elder Keymer found it a difficult matter nowadays to meet Launce’s frequent demands on his purse. In short, the only thing left for the latter to do—and it was a point as to which both father and son were in thorough accord—was to marry a girl with money. Now, it so happened that Keymer _père_ had a cousin, who was a clerk in the office of Mr. Linaway, the chief lawyer in St. Oswyth’s—a man with a large family and a very limited income, whom the brewer had more than once been able to help, at little or no cost to himself. This cousin, Tuttle by name, not ungrateful for past favours, and with an eye, perhaps, to any which the future might have in store for him, and having some reason to believe that Launce was looking out for a wife with a fortune, determined to do the brewer what he termed “a good turn,” in confiding to him a certain professional secret which he had learnt by accident, and of which he was supposed to be wholly ignorant.