'What a world it is, to be sure!' thought Mr. Larkin, as he shook his long head over Dutton's letter. 'How smoothly and simply everything would go, if only men would stick to truth! Here's this letter--how much time and trouble it costs me--how much opportunity possibly sacrificed, simply by reason of the incurable mendacity of men.' And he knocked the back of his finger bitterly on the open page. Another thought now struck him for the first time. Was there no mode of 'hedging,' so that whether Mark Wylder were living or dead the attorney should stand to win? Down came the Brandon boxes. The prudent attorney turned the key in the door, and forth came the voluminous marriage settlement of Stanley Williams Lake, of Slobberligh, in the county of Devon, late captain, &c., &c. of the second part, and Dorcas Adderley Brandon, of Brandon Hall, in the county of &c., &c. of the second part, and so forth. And as he read this pleasant composition through, he two or three times murmured approvingly, 'Yes--yes--yes.' His recollection had served him quite rightly. There was the Five Oaks estate, specially excluded from settlement, worth 1,400_l._ a year; but it was conditioned that the said Stanley Williams Lake was not to deal with the said lands, except with the consent in writing of the said Dorcas, &c., who was to be a consenting party to the deed. If there was really something 'unsound in the state of Lake's relations,' and that he could be got to consider Lawyer Larkin as a friend worth keeping, that estate might be had a bargain--yes, a _great_ bargain. Larkin walked off to Brandon, but there he learned that Captain _Brandon_ Lake as he now chose to call himself, had gone that morning to London. 'Business, I venture to say, and he went into that electioneering without ever mentioning it either.' So thought Larkin, and he did not like this. It looked ominous, and like an incipient sliding away of the Brandon business, Well, no matter, all things worked together for good. It was probably well that he should not be too much shackled with considerations of that particular kind in the important negotiation about Five Oaks. That night he posted a note to Burlington, Smith, and Co., and by Saturday night's post there came down to the sheriff an execution for 123_l._ and some odd shillings, upon a judgment on a warrant to confess, at the suit of that firm, for costs and money advanced, against the poor vicar, who never dreamed, as he conned over his next day's sermon with his solitary candle, that the blow had virtually descended, and that his homely furniture, the silver spoons his wife had brought him, and the two shelves half full of old books which he had brought her, and all the rest of their little frugal trumpery, together with his own thin person, had passed into the hands of Messrs. Burlington, Smith, and Co.