at the exciseman, and numerous advices to "Shut
up, ugly!" "Choke off!" &c. The magistrates
retired for a few minutes, and, on their return, they
gave their decision as follows:

"Their worships are unanimously agreed that
they can offer no decision in regard to the hogshead
and its contents. The claims are conflicting,
and may or may not be coequal and
coexistent, for though the capturer of the
hogshead may with some colour of justice uphold
his right to the claret, on the plea of salvage,
yet do the rights of flotson and jetsam give a
coequal claim of ownership to the lord of the
manor, whilst the rights of the excise interfere
with both, and may, in their worships' opinion,
be, perhaps, pre-existent. But while unprepared
to give any decision upon the points at
Issue, for the case is not down in the books,
their worships are relieved from further trouble
by the amicable manner in which the case has
been submitted to them. They are therefore
unanimously of opinion that the hogshead should
remain secure under lock and key, and a
memorial be forwarded to the Board of Excise,
praying the board to take the various claims
into their earliest possible consideration, so that
the hogshead and its contents may be disposed
of as to them may seem fit."

The three claimants left the court together,
as they entered. They proceeded to the store
where the hogshead was imprisoned, and having
made sure it was all safe, they rolled it up
against the wall, shut it in, turned the key, and
all three affixed their seals upon the door, with
the understanding that these were not to be
broken until such time as the Board of Excise
returned an answer to their memorial.

Letters did not travel so fast in those days as
they do now, but I expected uncle would have
an answer in a week or ten days, at furthest.
How uncle laughed at me, "Willy," said he,
"we shall indeed be fortunate if we hear
anything about the claret within six months. The
government coach is a stick-in-the-mud vehicle,
and the coachman sleeps on his box." And he
was right, too, for six months passed, and a
year, and then six months more, and no answer
came back, and I thought they had forgotten all
about it. At last uncle had to go up to London,
and he got one of our county members to make
inquiries about the hogshead. Didn't he laugh
when he told us, on his return, that the memorial
had been handed from one clerk to another
in the Excise, and referred back again, and laid
before a committee, then reported upon by a
commission, submitted to counsel for opinion,
covered over with figures and hieroglyphics,
passed on through various stages, then
docketed, tied up in red tape, and laid upon
somebody's desk until he chose to look at it. They
don't use red tape in government offices now, as
formerly. Some naughty man, who I did hear
was hanged, drawn, and quartered for it (the
Lord Chancellor and all the great lawyers saying
he was guilty of high treason), wrote wicked
things about the Circumlocution Office, accusing
the gentlemen in government departments of
tying up John Bull with red tape, and strangling
him with it. People laughed so much about
this red tape, that it was ordered not to be used
any more, and official documents are now tied in
pretty green ribbon. Isn't that clever? Nobody
can laugh at great folks any longer about
"red-tapeism!"

Would you think it? Nearly two years after
uncle found the claret we heard that a fourth
claimant had started up in the person of a Mr.
Droits, of the Admiralty, and that perhaps we
might get none of it. I asked everybody I met
who this Mr. Droits was, and everybody I asked
told me he didn't know. Lawyer Tregarthen
laughed at me when I said it wasn't a Cornish
name, and advised me to question uncle about
the gentleman. I did so, and uncle told me it
was not a gentleman at all, but the droits or
rights which the Admiralty possessed over all
property found at a certain distance from shore.
The Lords of the Admiralty did not, however,
press their claim upon the hogshead, and folks
down our way said it would have been very
different if the claret had been port. I asked
somebody why this was, and he told me that
"mulberry-nosed, gouty-toed admirals were fed
on nothing but port wine and turtle."

We did get an answer to the memorial after
all. The Board of Excise took two years and
three months to decide the question, and then
sent word that the claret was to be divided
equally amongst the three claimants. Lawyer
Tregarthen and the exciseman called upon uncle
(I was home then for the holidays), and it was
arranged that the next day but one all three
were to be at the store at nine o'clock in the
morning, for the purpose of bottling off the
claret. I shall never forget that day. Uncle
Sam sent down nine dozen empty claret bottles
in a cart, and I accompanied him to the store,
where we found Lawyer Tregarthen and the
exciseman waiting our arrival. The steward had
an assemblage of bottles similar to uncle's, but
I never saw such a lot of odd-shaped things as
the exciseman had brought there. He had
magnums, quart and pint wine bottles,
champagne bottles, soda-water and ginger-beer
bottles, and three big medicine bottles. Everybody
laughed at him, but he laughed too, and
said his bottles would hold as much wine as the
others. Then he broke the seals on the door,
and in we went—uncle, Lawyer Tregarthen, the
exciseman, and I—the crowd standing outside by
the bottles.

The exciseman grasped a gimlet in his hand,
and with a magnificent flourish, plunged it into
the hogshead, turned it round and round, and
pushed it in up to the handle. He had previously
placed a can underneath to catch the
wine, but when he pulled out the gimlet not a
drop followed. We all looked at each other in
astonishment, and uncle said we had better
remove the head of the cask. This was soon done,
amidst peals of laughter outside, and we
discovered that the interior of the cask was dry as
a chip. What could have become of the wine?
We turned the hogshead over and examined the