He will cheat you out of your eye teeth, sir, unless you are protected by the best legal talent to be had--the best to be had--the talent and the advice of the man to whom your late lamented mother went for counsel." "Yes," said I after a while, "I think he will." "That is why your mother," he went on, "advised with me; for even if I have to say it, I'm a living whirlwind in court.

Suppose we have a drink!" I sat with my drink before me, slowly sipping it, and trying to see through this man and the new question he had brought up.

Certainly, I was entitled to my mother's property--all of it by rights, whatever the law might be--for it came through my father.

Surely this lawyer must be a good man, or my mother wouldn't have consulted him.

But when I mentioned to my new friend, whose name was Jackway, my claim to the whole estate he assured me that Rucker was the legal owner of his share in it--I forget how much.
"And," said he, "I make no doubt the old scoundrel has reduced the whole estate to possession, and is this moment," lowering his voice secretively, "acting as executor _de son tort_--executor _de son tort_, sir! I wouldn't put it past him!" I wrote this, with some other legal expressions in my note-book.
"How can I get this money away from him ?" said I, coming to the point.
"Money!" said he.