No hiding-place is too unlikely. When Lord Hailes died in 1792 no will was to be found. The daughter and only child had given up hope of possessing the mansion-house, but when her servants were locking it up and closing the shutters, from behind a panel there fell the will which secured her the estate. Harris Norman, a pedlar, who died worth over £11,000, left a will which was found in a silk hat; and lately a curious story was told in the Probate Court of a will found in a clock. The deceased’s husband, it was stated, made a search for a will, but was for some time unsuccessful. As the greater part of his wife’s property consisted of freeholds, in which under an intestacy he would take but a curtesy interest, it was with anxiety that the search was made. Eventually, at the back of a clock on the mantelpiece, the will was found, betrayed by the stopping of the clock. Not unnaturally a charge of forgery was set up. It is certainly dangerous, for more than one reason, to hide a will securely away. In this case the judge pronounced in its favour. “What more likely than after the deceased had been worried to make a will for little Hilda (her niece), she thought that she would leave her property to her husband? Was it likely that she would tell any one? Was it not likely that she would put it in some place—as in the back of the clock—which would not be opened for some days after her death?” On the other hand, the High Court of Bengal, in 1903, refused to admit to probate a will which was stated to have been searched for and found in a tin box formerly in the possession of one who was said to have been the custodian of the will in his lifetime, and the Court said: “We hold that fraud and deceit were practised at the finding of the will.” Certainly wills are given sometimes to friends for custody, and then themselves bequeathed. Charles Johnson, for instance, seaman of the frigate _Coventry_, in his will dated 1778, stated that he had two wills in his possession, and these at his death he gave to his friend Henry Dye, belonging to the same ship. “Memorandum, that on the three and twentieth day of July, 1595, this will was found in the little black trunk of the said Elenor Clarke standing at her bed’s foot, being found locked and opened in the presence of us John Worsopp, William Payne, John Smithe.” The heirs of Charles William Minet, who died in 1874, a descendant of a family which had fled from France at the persecution of Protestants in 1686, were not so fortunate. No will could be found, and his manor-house was sold. But in 1905, on a death in another branch of the family, some neglected cases were examined, and in one of them lay the will. It showed that the estate had been settled in tail, and it was accordingly repurchased, that the testator’s intentions might not be frustrated.