ain" (my father's eyes were on the
priest's face), "but if it is necessary he will tell."

"Now that sounds like a threat," Mapleson urged. Somehow, shrewd as he
was, solid as his case appeared to himself, the man was growing
uncomfortable. "I've known Le Claire's story for years. I never
questioned him once. I had my papers from Dodd. Le Claire long ago
renounced the world. His life has proved it. The world includes the
undivided north half of section 29, range 14. That's Jean Pahusca's.
It's too late now for his father to try to get it away from him,
Baronet. You know the courts won't stand for it." Adroit as he was, the
Southern blood was beginning to show in Tell's nervous manner and
flashing eyes.

"When I came back from the war," my father went on, ignoring the
interruption, "I found that the courthouse records had been juggled
with. Some of them, with some other papers, had been stolen. It happened
on a night when for some reason O'mie, a harmless, uninfluential Irish
orphan, was hunted for everywhere in order to be murdered. Why? He stood
in the way of a land-claim, and human life was cheap that night."

Tell Mapleson's face was ashy gray with anger; but no heed was given to
him, as my father continued.

"It happened that Jean Pahusca, who took him out of town by mistake and
left him unconscious and half dead on the bank of Fingal's Creek, was
ordered back by the ruffians to find his body, and if he was alive to
finish him in any way the Indian chose. That same night the courthouse
was entered, and the record of this land-entry was taken."

"I have papers showing O'Meara's signing it over--" Tell began; but my
father waved his hand and proceeded.

"Briefly put, it was concealed in the old stone cabin by one Amos
Judson. Le Claire here was a witness to the transaction."

The priest nodded assent.

"But for reasons of his own he did not report the theft. He did,
however, remove the papers from their careless hiding-place in an old
chest to a more secure nook in the far corner of the dark loft. Before I
came home he had left Springvale, and business matters called him to
France. He has not been here since, until last September when he spent a
few days out at the cabin. The lead box had been taken from the loft and
concealed under the flat stone that forms the door step, possibly by
some movers who camped there and did some little harm to the property.

"I have the box in the bank vault now. Le Claire turn