"These sort of cases generally find their way into Chancery-lane, don't they ?--that lane which, for some unhappy travellers, has no turning except the one dismal _via_ which leads to dusty death.

You seem in very good spirits; and I suppose I ought to be elated too.

Three thousand pounds would give me a start in life, and enable me to set up in the new character of a respectable rate-paying citizen.

But I've a kind of presentiment that this hand of mine will never touch the prize of the victor; or, in plainer English, that no good will ever arise to me or mine out of the reverend intestate's hundred thousand pounds." "Why, what a dismal-minded croaker you are this morning!" exclaimed George Sheldon with unmitigated disgust; "a regular raven, by Jove! You come to a fellow's office just as matters are beginning to look like success--after ten years' plodding and ten years' disappointment--and you treat him to maudlin howls about the Court of Chancery.

This is a new line you've struck out, Hawkehurst, and I can tell you it isn't a pleasant one." "Well, no, I suppose I oughtn't to say that sort of thing," answered Valentine in an apologetic tone; "but there are some days in a man's life when there seems to be a black cloud between him and everything he looks at.