"You are talking nonsense, Edith," her grandfather interrupted, impatiently. "I know where that cane is. It got broken and I threw it away. It was an old cane, anyhow,--not worth making a fuss over."
"I wonder if you could find it," Lyon said to the girl, in a swift aside. She ran at once upstairs, and in a few moments returned, a little breathless, but successful. She was carrying a heavy-headed cane which in general appearance was very like the broken cane which had figured in the trial. Lyon's eyes sparkled when he saw it. His idea that Lawrence had forgotten his cane here in the hall, and that the old gentleman, whose eyesight was confessedly so bad that he could not read the newspapers, had picked it out of the hall rack by mistake for one of his own, seemed now conclusively proved. And after all his work, that the actual discovery of the fact should come so by accident and casually!
"Is this your New Orleans cane,--the one you told me about?" he asked.
The old gentleman was examining it with a puzzled look and growing perplexity. "I don't understand it," he murmured. "I guess I must be getting old. I ought to be dead."
"Nonsense. The explanation is very simple, and I think I can tell you what It is. But first, is this your New Orleans cane?"
"It certainly seems to be."
"Would you swear to it?"
"But what was that other cane?"
"Let us settle this first. Would you swear to this one,--that it is your own, and that this is the cane that you thought you had with you when you broke your stick across those fighting dogs? You may be asked in court to testify to that point, Mr. Wolcott. Can you swear that this stick is actually the one that you thought you had broken?"
"Why, of course it is. I know my own stick. But I don't understand--"