"The estate," said my new friend, "is small, Jacob; but right is right,
and there is no reason why this man Rucker should not be made to
disgorge every cent that's coming to you--every cent! I know Doctor
Rucker slightly, and I hope I shall not shock you if I say that in my
opinion he would steal the Lord's Supper, and wipe his condemned lousy
red whiskers and his freckled claws with the table-cloth! That's the
kind of pilgrim and stranger Rucker is. 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.
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