Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/401

 information on the subject. Then, of course, at the most critical moment he awoke.

The bright cheery breakfast-table followed. The horse was ordered round, and while it was being saddled, the host asked the clergyman would he not like to see the house. The parson was shown over, and saw much that he admired. As they were coming down he expressed his pleasure. The host grew downcast, and said he as afraid he should enjoy it but a very short time, as there was an action for ejectment coming on at the next assizes, and through the loss of a certain family paper, they were almost sure to be defeated.

The parson's dream then suggested itself, and he asked abruptly.

"Have I seen the whole house? Is there no picture-gallery?"

"No," was the answer. "Seen the whole house?—Stay—we have pictures up-stairs, and there is a large room"

They went up again. At a turn they came to a stair which the parson seemed to recognise. At the top of the stair they entered an old long room, with pictures down the sides; the curate then knew where he was. He walked straight to a particular picture, moved it out, and behind it was discovered a sort of recess filled with papers; among them was found the missing deed.

A very curious problem recurs periodically. We hear of two members of a family—husband and wife, father and daughter—perishing together in some great calamity. The property of one passing, by will, to the other, it is necessary to prove which died first. On this point, which perhaps no one can decide, depends the rights of different parties. Two of these instances, one in humble life, the other in a higher station, add to the instances of noble behaviour in face of death. The humbler one first.

In the year 1814, Taylor, a staff-sergeant of artillery, was coming home with his wife from Portugal in the transport Queen. They had at rived at Falmouth, but a storm coming on, drove the vessel on a rock, where she was fast going to pieces. The sergeant was on deck as the vessel was parting, and in a loud voice he was heard to offer two thousand pounds to any man who would save his wife. This appeal having no effect, he went down himself and was never seen again. This wealthy artilleryman was possessed of about four thousand pounds, which he had willed to his wife, and it depended on which of the two died first as to whether it should go to his relatives or to hers. The Roman law was urged, which in absence of evidence, assumed that the man was the stronger, and more likely to live longer—that a woman was more likely to exhaust herself by screaming, and that a man's figure was more buoyant. It was urged for the woman that she was robust and hearty, while the sergeant was invalided and in wretched health. But the court declined to make any presumption, and decreed that the proof of survivorship lay on the woman, and that both died together.

The other case is very touching. A vessel called the Dalhousie was coming home from Australia, with a Mr. and Mrs. Underwood and their three children on board. Husband and wife, by some strange presentiment, had each made wills in each other's favour. The ship foundered, and a solitary sailor, named Reed, was saved. This tar gave a sketch of the last scene in a simple fashion, yet, in the powerfully dramatic way that arises from simplicity. He described the family standing together, waiting quietly for the end. The vessel, he said, was nearly on her beam-ends. He was trying to get the boat clear, when he heard a scream from the mother—the little girl had been washed away. He looked round and saw them standing together. "They were all clasped together; the two boys had hold of their mother; the father's arms were round all. I don't believe it was a minute before a sea came and swept them all off. They seemed to go off all at once. I don't think they were separated. None of them ever came in sight again." It was decided here that this evidence was conclusive as to husband and wife dying together, and the doctrine now is that in such cases death is assumed to take place at the same moment.

The "books" are full of the strange risks and perils run by wills—craft of all shapes and sizes which are sent out upon the waves, from the huge vessel built on the most approved principles, by the best workmen, and of the best materials, warranted, its departed owner is assured, to stand any storm, to the little cockleshell boat rudely put together in a few minutes, and made of a few planks hurriedly nailed up; the latter very often arriving quite safe, while the former gets among the breakers, and goes to pieces on legal rocks and sandbanks. Let us read one of these voyages and shipwrecks.

MRS. KELLY'S WILL.

A good many years ago, there used to come up to Dublin a disreputable unmarried old gentleman, named Kelly. He had large estates in the county Roscommon, where his movements were watched with all the interest of expectation by a number of spendthrift relations. He was fond, however, of coming up to his house in Merrion-square, whence, though past seventy, he went forth to indulge in the lowest and most degraded shapes of dissipation. At night the disreputable old gentleman used to totter forth, leaving his fine town mansion, and make his way to some notorious haunt. In one of these excursions he lost a pocket-book containing five hundred pounds in notes, and was agreeably surprised and delighted at the honesty of a young girl who came to him with it one morning. This creature's character would bear even less investigation than perhaps that of the worst of her friends and companions, and, young as she was, she had acquired great notoriety. Her name was Sarah Birch. She proved to be a woman of strong intellect and singular purpose, and her life, thus beginning in the mire, was to be the strangest.

The old gentleman must have been a man of