At his baby caress Love lit a new lamp in her dark path and Hope stole back and led the way as she hugged Billy close and said, “Yes, some day we’ll surely get out of the cage together and fly far away.”
[V]
MRS. LANE PLAYS DETECTIVE
For several weeks after the reading of Aunt Jimmy’s will, it was the talk of the neighbourhood, the alternate topic of conversation being the death of Terence O’More and the sudden disappearance of Bird. For Bird’s Uncle John had come and gone so suddenly that few knew of his flying visit, and those who did turned it into an interesting mystery. Some said that he was a very rich relation from the west, others that he was not an uncle at all, but the agent of the State Orphan Asylum to which the Lanes, afraid of being expected to care for Bird, had hurried her off. It is needless to say that it was Mrs. Slocum, piqued at not securing Bird as a maid of all work and no pay, who concocted this tale.
In due time Probate Judge Ricker appointed Joshua Lane administrator, to take charge of the furniture and few effects that O’More had left and settle up his debts as far as possible. There was a little money left of what his wife had inherited, in the Northboro Bank, but only enough to pay his debts, it was feared, without so much as leaving a single dollar for Bird.
Since the homestead and Mill Farm property that belonged to Mrs. O’More had been forfeited through some defect in the drawing up of a mortgage coupled with O’More’s slackness in attending to the matter, Joshua Lane had felt there was something wrong and that a little good legal advice, combined with common sense, might have at least saved something if not the entire property.
When, a year later, the mill had slipped into Abiram Slocum’s hands, Joshua’s suspicions were again aroused, for Slocum’s transactions in real estate were usually adroit and to the cruel disadvantage of some one, if not absolutely dishonest according to the letter of the law; but when Joshua had spoken to O’More about the matter, he, feeling hopeful about his painting, had put him off with a promise to “some day” show him the “letters and papers” that bore upon the unfortunate business.
The day had never come, and now that Joshua had the right he determined to sift the affair thoroughly, but the papers were nowhere to be found. The envelope containing O’More’s bank-book held nothing else but the certificate of his marriage with Sarah Turner, and some letters from his mother in the old country.