In this case the survivors seem to have been more anxious than the dying man that the will should not be mislaid. They were not subject to the delicacy of feeling of Mr. Weller in a later age. “Samivel,” said Mr. Weller accosting his son on the morning of the funeral, “I’ve found it, Sammy. I thought it wos there.” “Thought wot wos where?” inquired Sam. “Your mother-in-law’s vill, Sammy,” replied Mr. Weller. “In wirtue o’ vich, them arrangements is to be made as I told you on last night respectin’ the funs.” “Wot, didn’t she tell you were it wos?” inquired Sam. “Not a bit on it, Sammy,” replied Mr. Weller. “We wos a adjestin’ our little differences, and I wos a cheerin’ her spirits and bearin’ her up, so that I forgot to ask anythin’ about it. I don’t know as I should ha’ done it indeed, if I had remembered it,” added Mr. Weller, “for it’s a rum sort o’ thing, Sammy, to go a hankerin’ arter anybody’s property, ven you’re assistin’ ’em in illness. It’s like helping an outside passenger up, ven he’s been pitched off a coach, and puttin’ your hand in his pocket, vile you ask vith a sigh how he finds hisself, Sammy.” The danger of a will’s loss or destruction preys upon some minds, a subject which must be recurred to in the last chapter of this book. Various expedients to facilitate the finding of the will are adopted. Dr. Thomas Cheyney, Dean of Winchester, whose will was proved in 1760, began a codicil thus: “Whereas by my last will (which may be found in the innermost part of a little walnut bureau with one glass door in my long gallery)....” Lord St. Leonards, the lawyer, made every effort for the safety of his will, it being carefully kept in a strong-box and securely guarded, as was thought; but when he died in 1875, and the box was duly opened, the will was missing after all. “Thackeray,” says G. W. E. Russell in “Seeing and Hearing,” “did not traffic very much in wills, though, to be sure, Jos. Sedley left £1,000 to Becky Sharp, and the opportune discovery of Lord Ringwood’s will in the pocket of his travelling-carriage simplified Philip’s career. The insolvent swindler, Dr. Firmin, who had robbed his son and absconded to America, left his will ‘in the tortoiseshell secretaire in the consulting-room, under the picture of Abraham offering up Isaac.’” A missing will is the novelist’s delight. In Miss Everett Green’s “A Will in a Well,” among the incoherent sentences of a dying man, the words “Search well” are overheard. But it needed an acute intellect to realise, after every effort had been made to find a satisfactory _last_ will, that it was a disused well that should have been scoured for the document. In Mrs. Wilfred Ward’s “Great Possessions” a lost will is found, and redeems the testator’s reputation.