e had seen neither of them; and the signing must have
been through some sort of trickery of which he was unaware. But would
such a statement hold in court? Houston learned, a half-hour later,
that it wouldn't, as he faced the family attorney, in his big, bleak,
old-fashioned office.

"It's all right, Barry, for you to tell me that you didn't sign it,"
came the edict. "I'd believe you--because I feel sure you wouldn't lie
to me. But it would be pretty thin stuff to tell to a jury. There is
the contract and the lease in black and white. Both bear your
signature which, you have declared in the presence of witnesses, to be
genuine. Even when a man signs a paper while insane, it's a hard job
to pull it back; and we certainly wouldn't have any witnesses who could
swear that you had lost your reason."

"Nope," he concluded, giving the papers a flip, as though disposing of
the whole matter, "somebody has just worked the old sewing-machine
racket on you--with trimmings. This is an adaptation of a game that is
as old as the hills--the one where the solicitors would go up to a
farmhouse, sell a man a sewing-machine or a cream separator at a
ridiculous figure, let him sign what he thought was a contract to pay a
certain amount a month for twelve months--and then take the promissory
note which he really had signed down to the bank and discount it.
Instead of a promissory note, they made this a contract and a lease.
And just to make it good, they had their confederate, a legalized
notary public, put his seal upon it as a witness. You can't remember
when all this happened?"

"According to Jenkins--who put the notary seal on there--the whole
thing was put over about a week or so before I left for the West.
That's the date on them too. About that time, I remember, I had a good
many papers to sign. A lot of legal stuff, if you'll remember, came up
about father's estate, in which my signature was more of a form than
anything else. I naturally suspected nothing, and in one or two
instances signed without reading."

"And signed away your birthright--to this contract and lease. You did
it with no intention of giving your land and flume and flume site away,
that's true. If one of the men would be willing to confess to a
conspiracy, it would hold water in court. Otherwise not. You've been
bunked, and your signature is as legal and as binding as though you had
read that contract and lease-form a hundred times over. So I don