"But Ralph is not the heir. Gerald hated him, and would have thrown his money into the St. Lawrence sooner than Ralph should get it."
"Quite so. It is Ralph's boy, a fine lad, too. But he will do just as his father thinks best. Any young fellow would be like wax in the hands of so keen a practitioner as friend Ralph."
"I think not. Mrs. Selby's child is the heir. She was to have had the property herself if she had not married against her brother's wish."
"My dear sir, that child is dead. It must be. It is ten years since it disappeared. In spite of every effort and inquiry, nothing has been heard of it since the day it was lost. Ralph's boy is the heir in default of Mrs. Selby's children. Failing the boy, Ralph would inherit from his son."
"I have known so many instances in the South of the long-lost heir turning up when he was least expected, that I never look on any one as dead till I have seen the burial certificate. After a person has been put underground, in the presence of witnesses, I feel that his claims have been quieted, but not before. Twenty years from the date of Mrs. Selby's marriage we will hand over the property to her child; failing a child of hers we will pay it to Ralph's son; and, meanwhile, we need not trouble our heads with questions of heirship."
"True; but we would not fulfil the duty our deceased friend expected of us if we stood idly by while panics and fluctuations of the Stock Market were eating away the value of the property. Man alive! our allowances and commissions in selling out and re-investing would go a long way to make up any loss which could be proved in a court to have arisen from our error in judgment, even if our good intentions did not weigh with the jury to absolve us. That is, supposing the heir should be shabby enough to make such a claim. But the supposition is preposterous. If you sell out that block of stock in the Banque d'Orval and the Proletarian now, your brokerage will be quite a pretty thing--makes a man wish himself a broker to think of it."
"And after the shares were sold, what would you do with the money?"
"Invest in first mortgages on good real property--never to more than half or a third of the value. I can lay my hands on any quantity of such security. It is safe beyond question; for, as you observed a little while ago, the acres cannot run away and I will see to there being the fullest powers of foreclosure and sale; so there can be no possibility of loss."
"I do not understand your Canady laws about real property, and I would be sure to get tripped up in some nicety about titles."
"But I know, General. It is my business."