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GUY MANNERING.
311

alternately awakened and faded, and who were straining their apprehensions to get at the drift of the testator's meaning through the mist of technical language in which the conveyance had involved it, might have made a study for Hogarth.

The deed was of an unexpected nature. It set forth with conveying and disponing all and whole the estate and lands of Singleside and others, with the lands of Loverless, Lyalone, Spinster's Knowe and heaven knows what besides, "to and in favours of (here the reader softened his voice to a gentle and modest piano) Peter Protocol, clerk to the signet, having the fullest confidence in his capacity and integrity, (these are the very words which my worthy deceased friend insisted upon inserting) '"But in trust always," (here the reader recovered his voice and stile, and the visages of several of the hearers, which had attained a longitude that Mr Mortcloke might have envied, were perceptibly shortened) "in trust always, and for the uses, ends, and purposes herein after-mentioned."