“But will not the action be tried in a reasonable time, say a week or two?”
“I perceive,” cried I, “that you are yet in the very springtide and babyhood of innocence in these matters. There must be summonses for time and for further time; there must be particulars and interrogatories and discoveries and inspections and strikings out and puttings in and appeals and demurrers and references and—”
“O, please don’t. I perceive that poor Naboth is already ruined a long way back. I think when you came to the interrogatories he was in want of funds to carry on the action.”
“A Chancery action sometimes takes years,” said I.
“Years! then shame to our Parliament.”
“I pray you do not take on so,” said I. “Naboth, according to the decree of Fate, is to be ruined. Jezebel did it in a wicked, clumsy and brutal manner. Anyone could see she was wrong, and her name has been handed down to us with infamy and execration. I now desire to show how Ahab could have accomplished his purpose in a gentle, manly and scientific manner and saved his wife’s reputation. Naboth’s action, carried as it would be from Court to Court upon every possible point upon which an appeal can go, under our present system, would effectually ruin him ages before the boundary line could be settled. It would be all swallowed up in costs.”
“Poor Naboth!” said my wife.
“And,” continued I, “the law reports would hand down the cause celebre of Ahab v. Naboth as a most interesting leading case upon the subject of goodness knows what: perhaps as to whether a man, under certain circumstances, may not alter his neighbour’s landmark in spite of the statute law of Moses.”
“And so you think poor Naboth would be sold up?”
“That were about the only certain event in his case, except that Ahab would take possession and so put an end for ever to the question as to where the boundary line should run.”