"What am I to do?" he said, with an air of great perplexity. "Here is my poor sister lying here needing the care of her friends, and the comforts and luxuries of her home. Yet you will not permit me to exercise my right to remove her."
"Prove your right, sir," said the farmer, firmly; "that's all I want you to do."
"And if I prove my right to remove her you will suffer me to do so?" asked Leon, after a moment's earnest thought.
"Why, of course, sir. I'd have no right to detain her after that."
"He cannot prove his right!" exclaimed Queenie, who had lain silent for some minutes.
"Have you an errand boy?" asked Vinton, disregarding the interruption.
Mr. Thorn went to the door, and called "Jotham," and the boy-of-all-work shambled in.
"Do you know a cottage on the banks of the river, two miles from here, Jotham?"
"Ya'as, sur," said the boy, broadly.
Leon Vinton wrote these words on a slip of paper: