July 22. Evening.
He stooped to kiss her and sank down beside her where she sat cowering in the dark. Although she could not see his face clearly Marise knew from his manner that he was very tired, from the way he sat down, taking off his cap, and his attitude as he leaned his head back against the pillar. She knew this without thinking about it, mechanically, with the automatic certainty of a long-since acquired knowledge of him. And when he spoke, although his voice was quiet and level, she felt a great fatigue in his accent.
But he spoke with his usual natural intonation, which he evidently tried to make cheerful. "I'm awfully glad you're still up, dear. I was afraid you'd be too tired, with the funeral coming tomorrow. But I couldn't get here any sooner. I've been clear over the mountain today. And I've done a pretty good stroke of business that I'm in a hurry to tell you about. You remember, don't you, how the Powers lost the title to their big woodlot? I don't know if you happen to remember all the details, how a lawyer named Lowder . . ."
"I remember," said Marise, speaking for the first time, "all about it."
"Well," went on Neale, wearily but steadily, "up in Nova Scotia this time, talking with one of the old women in town, I ran across a local tradition that, in a town about ten miles inland, some of the families were descended from Tory Yankees who'd been exiled from New England, after the Revolution. I thought it was worth looking up, and one day I ran up there to see if I could find out anything about them. It was Sunday and I had to . . ."
Marise was beside herself, her heart racing wildly. She took hold of his arm and shook it with all her might. "Neale, quick! quick! Leave out all that. What did you do?"
She could see that he was surprised by her fierce impatience, and for an instant taken aback by the roughness of the interruption. He stared at her. How slow Neale was!
He began, "But, dear, why do you care so much about it? You can't understand about what I did, if I don't tell you this part, the beginning, how I . . ." Then, feeling her begin to tremble uncontrollably, he said hastily, "Why, of course, Marise, if you want to know the end first. The upshot of it all is that I've got it straightened out, about the Powers woodlot. I got track of those missing leaves from the Ashley Town Records. They really were carried away by that uncle of yours. I found them up in Canada. I had a certified copy and tracing made of them. It's been a long complicated business, and the things only came in yesterday's mail, after you'd been called over here. But I'd been in correspondence with Lowder, and when I had my proofs in hand, I telephoned him and made him come over yesterday afternoon. It was one of the biggest satisfactions I ever expect to have, when I shoved those papers under his nose and watched him curl up. Then I took him back today, myself, to his own office, not to let him out of my sight, till it was all settled. There was a great deal more to it . . . two or three hours of fight. I bluffed some, about action by the bar-association, disbarment, a possible indictment for perjury, and seemed to hit a weak spot. And finally I saw him with my own eyes burn up that fake warranty-deed. And that's all there is to that. Just as soon as we can get this certified copy admitted and entered on our Town Records, 'Gene can have possession of his own wood-land. Isn't that good news?"
He paused and added with a tired, tolerant, kindly accent, "Now Nelly will have fourteen pairs of new shoes, each laced higher up than the others, and I won't be the one to grudge them to her."
He waited for a comment and, when none came, went on doggedly making talk in that resolutely natural tone of his. "Now that you know the end, and that it all came out right, you ought to listen to some details, for they are queer. The missing pages weren't in that first town I struck at all. Nothing there but a record of a family of Simmonses who had come from Ashley in 1778. They had . . ."