of his portmanteaus, till he had thrown them or their contents into the deep waters.

[Pg 29]

That he would do when they were fairly out to sea. Then he would pick safer—quite safe.

The vessel steamed on for her one and only stopping—Queenstown, to pick up the mails.[Pg 30]

[Pg 30]

CHAPTER IV

THE CITY LAWYER AND THE CLIENT FROM THE WILD AND WOOLLY WEST

Aunt Depew had lived on the rentals of the property she had left to her nephew. Loide had been her solicitor for nearly twenty years.

She had a blind confidence in him—that way fraud lies. Absolute trust in a man oft tempts him to break it.

Regularly every quarter he had paid over to her the rentals of the properties; that was all she had cared for. She had never troubled about, or even visited, the places in which the buildings were situated.

She had no idea that by reason of the building of a railway station, and other developing influences, the revenue of her property had gone up by leaps and bounds, and that ultimately, while she was receiving two hundred and fifty pounds a year from property which she thought worth about five thousand pounds, the lawyer was receiving four times that sum, and the real value was about twenty thousand pounds.[Pg 31]

[Pg 31]

Could any more sad blow have been aimed at the lawyer than the black edged intimation which reached him one morning—tidings of the death of his best client?

The dead woman had had a companion living with her, and this companion had witnessed the will, and herself after the funeral handed it to Loide.

Otherwise there is a question when the tidings would have reached the legatee in America—if they ever got so far.

Yet that eternal hope we hear of in the human breast, sprang up in the lawyer's, when he reflected that America was a long way off, that he, Loide, was the executor, and would have the proving of the will.

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