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When the body of an unknown man is dragged from the river Thames, a series of complications involving the will of a wealthy man entangle the lives of several Londoners.

Page 741 of 1266
Table of Contents

VI

“No, nor yet him,” said Mr. Boffin.

“Remarkable case of a person who swallowed a crown-piece, sir?”

“To hide it?” asked Mr. Boffin.

“Why, no, sir,” replied Wegg, consulting the text, “it appears to have been done by accident. Oh! This next must be it. ‘Singular discovery of a will, lost twenty-one years.’ ”

“That’s it!” cried Mr. Boffin. “Read that.”

“ ‘A most extraordinary case,’ ” read Silas Wegg aloud, “ ‘was tried at the last Maryborough assizes in Ireland. It was briefly this. Robert Baldwin, in March 1782, made his will, in which he devised the lands now in question, to the children of his youngest son; soon after which his faculties failed him, and he became altogether childish and died, above eighty years old. The defendant, the eldest son, immediately afterwards gave out that his father had destroyed the will; and no will being found, he

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