"It hasn't a right to the land father bought and paid for."
"That is what I said."
"And what did he answer to that?" questioned Ralph Nelson, with increasing interest.
"He said he doubted if your father had really bought the land. He asked me to show him the papers in the case."
"And those you haven't got."
"No, I cannot find them. Your father placed them away, and when he died so suddenly, he said nothing about where they had been placed. I have an idea he gave them to somebody for safe keeping."
"It's a pity we haven't the papers, mother. The property on which this end of the swinging bridge rests, and the land right around it, is going to be very valuable some day; I heard Mr. Hooker say so at the post office only yesterday."
"I have no doubt of it, Ralph, when Westville becomes a city instead of a village. But that is many years off, I imagine."
"I suppose it is—the village folks are so slow to make improvements. It's a wonder they ever put up the bridge across to Eastport."
"They wouldn't have done it had it not been for Eastport capitalists, who furnished nearly all of the money."