"Everything went smoothly with me until a few weeks after I had passed my thirtieth birthday, when a man came into my office and retained me in an inheritance case, in which the amount involved was thirty thousand pounds. He had been made defendant in a suit brought against him by his own brother for the recovery of that sum. It was a very complicated case, but the brother really had no valid claim to the money. The father of the two men, ten minutes before his death, had told my client in confidence that it was his desire that he should inherit sixty thousand pounds more than the other brother, telling him, however, that he must get it for himself, since the written will of the dying man provided that the two sons should share and share alike. In spasmodic gasps the old man added that he would find the money concealed in a secret drawer in an old desk up in the attic, in sixty one-thousand pound notes. My client, realizing that his father could not last many minutes longer, and feeling that his dying wishes should not be thwarted, rushed from the room to the attic, and after rummaging about for nine minutes, found the drawer and touched the secret spring. Unfortunately the day was a very damp one, and the drawer stuck, so that it was fully eleven minutes before the money was really in my client's hands. He shoved it into his pocket and went downstairs again, where he learned that his father had expired one minute before, or just ten minutes after he had left him. "The other son not long after discovered what had been done, and after listening to my client's story, decided to contest his title to his share of the sixty thousand pounds, alleging that the money not having passed into my client's hands until after the testator's death, belonged to the estate, and could only be diverted therefrom upon the production of an instrument in writing over the deceased man's signature, duly witnessed. You see," added the spirit, "that was a very fine point." "Yes, indeed!" said Toppleton; "it's the kind of a point that I hope and pray may never puncture my professional epidermis, for I'll be hanged if I'd know what to advise. What did you do?"