JUDGEMENT :- This second appeal by the plaintiff raises a short but not an easy question in the construction of a deed. The Courts below have differed in their views. Briefly stated the point for decision is whether a purported deed of settlement is a composite instrument being a deed of settlement in respect of specified properties and a testamentary document in relation to the remaining properties of the settler. The deed in question was executed by Arunachalam Pillai, a Hindu Vellala, residing al Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli Dt., on 21-4-1927, as a marriage settlement on the eve of his third marriage. The preamble to the document sets out the circumstances under which the document was executed. His first wife was dead and had left a daughter Isakki who had been married away. He had taken a second wife by name Meenakshi about 8 years previously; but she had no issue and it is in these circumstances he sought the hand of the present plaintiff as third wife in the hope of continuing the line. She was his uncle' s daughter, then just aged 16, and the deed recited that when the marriage proposal was made, her father insisted on settlement of some properties as a condition for the marri

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