A tall, withered specimen of nearly 70, thin-whiskered and jejune of speech, you would have looked instinctively for the green bag at his side if you had met him on the street. "Whereas" and "aforesaid" and a dozen other legal barbarisms disfigured his rhetoric and the trick of buttoning his coat with an important air over documents mysteriously shuffled into his breast pocket was as natural to him as crossed legs to a tailor.
But all this pomp, ridiculous as it was, gave no promise of the disloyalty that was to follow. From the first words of his address it became evident that Hodgkins Hodgkins, Esq., was there not to execute the will of his friend but to oppose its execution. Like many another intrusted with the same office, he had transferred his allegiance from the forgotten dead to the living who had bounty to bestow. Mrs. Arnold, sitting among the spectators, alone, might well congratulate herself upon a clever stroke in engaging the services of the quondam executor for her son.
"As counsel for the petitioner, Mr. Harry Arnold," said Hodgkins, ahemming huskily, "I desire to explain to the court briefly my relation to the case. As your honor has been informed, I enjoyed the privilege of the testator's—or, more properly, the intestate's—acquaintance during a period of nearly fifty years. During that period nothing, I believe, ever occurred to mar our mutual trust and confidence. Up to six weeks ago the deceased had never expressed any desire to alter the natural distribution of his property after his death. Up to that time, although approaching his seventy-ninth birthday, my honored friend had been entirely satisfied, entirely satisfied, I repeat, with the prospects of a division of his estate according to the laws of descent in this commonwealth."
"A statement which we deny," broke in Shagarach, sotto voce. Hodgkins was a little nonplussed.
"Am I to understand that Brother Shagarach, representing, I presume, the interests of the other nephew, refers to some previously existing testament?"
"Not at all. I refer, your honor, to oral expressions of an intention to will his entire property to the nephew who lived with him, Mr. Robert Floyd."
"There was a will drawn, which is not extant, I believe?" inquired the judge.
"There was a will drawn," answered Shagarach, "but since unfortunately destroyed, by which Floyd was disinherited."
"I opine, then"—Mr. Hodgkins frequently opined—"that Brother Shagarach concedes the destruction of the document and is here——"
"To argue for its upholding."