A Case With A Lady In It

by Judge Clark

I had just taken possession of the worst room in Diggs' tavern—I was a young lawyer on my first circuit, and Diggs kept his best accommodations for the old stagers—when the words, “I say, Bill,” and Tom Mansfield burst upon me at the same instant .

Tom and I had been cronies from the time we had committed our first juvenile trespass on Deacon Roxley's water melon patch, till we afterwards studied the action of that name together in Judge Thompson's office.

“I say, Bill, I've got a case, and want your assistance in it.”

“Ah!” said I, in a consulting tone.

“A will case,” he continued, “full of the nicest kind of points, and the prettiest woman in the world for a client!”

“What about fees?” I inquired, by way of keeping up professional appearances.

“Hear the mercenary wretch!” he exclaimed. “If we succeed, there'll be plenty of money; if we don't, it will be a noble cause to fail in.”

“That's what they said of the dashing young chap that broke his neck trying to make 2.40 time with the chariot of the sun, but it didn't mend his neck.”

“Confound your mythology; business is business. Let me state the case.”

“Well, state away.”

This was it:

John Andrews had settled in the country when it was young. He had grown with its growth, and was the proprietor of half a dozen farms, and one fair daughter, the which he loved passing well.

His wife, the partner of the earliest and severest portion of his struggles, had died many years before, and his daughter had become mistress of his house while yet a child.

As Effie increased in years, her father prospered; and when at length he found himself the possessor of wealth, the ambition, so common under such circumstances, of elevating his daughter to a station in life above that in which she had been reared became a ruling… Read More