The latter advanced a certain sum of money upon a note. In the transactions which occurred between Donald and the money-lender the former alleged over-reaching.
An appeal was made to the law.
In the Province of Quebec the law moves slowly. Its feet are shod with the heavy irons of circumlocution. It is very solemn, but its pomp is antiquated. It undertakes to deal with your cause when you have long outgrown the interest or the passion of the original source of contention. Time has healed the wound. You are living at peace with your whilom enemy. You have shaken him by the hand, and partaken of his hospitality.
Then the law intervenes, and revives passions whose fires were almost out. Before Donald's case came on, he sold the farm to the money-lender.
Donald claimed that the latter, in the transaction of a mortgage prior to the sale, and in the terms of the sale itself, had cheated him out of $900.
The sale of the farm was made in a moment of angry impetuosity. Donald regretted the act, and wanted the sale cancelled upon terms which would settle his claim for the $900.
The money-lender re-sold the farm to a French family named Duquette.
Popular sympathy is not analytical. It grasps large features. It overlooks minutiæ.
Donald had been wronged. He had been despoiled of his farm. His years of toil in the West had gone for nothing, for the money he had earned had been put into the land which was now occupied by a stranger. This was what the people said. The young men were loud in their expressions of sympathy. The older heads shook dubiously.
"There would be trouble."