"Of course he is."
There was joy next day in one poor little household, for McNeil, who had been dragging along through the streets for days with a weight, the heaviest the poor have to bear, bowing him down—want of work—came into his little bare room where his wife and children huddled over an almost empty stove, with a new step and a fresh note in his voice. He had gotten a place and it meant life to him and to those he loved.
XXV
FATE LEADS
One evening I called at Mrs. Kale's to see my two old ladies of the bundles and also Mrs. Kale, for whom I had conceived a high regard on account of her kindness to the former as well as to myself, and in the course of my visit Miss Pansy gave me, for not the first time, an account of the way in which they had been reduced from what they thought affluence to what she very truly called "straitened circumstances." I confess that I was rather bored by her relation, which was given with much circumlocution until she mentioned casually that Miss Leigh had tried to interest her father in their case, but he had said it was too late to do anything. The mention of her name instantly made me alert. If she was interested, I was interested also. I began to ask questions, and soon had their whole story as well as she could give it.
"Why, it may or may not be too late," I said. "It is certainly very long ago, and the chances of being able to do anything now are very remote; but if there was a fraud, and it could be proved, it would not be too late—or, at least, might not be."
"Oh! Do you think that you could recover anything for us? Mr. McSheen said nothing could be gotten out of it, and we paid him—a great deal," she sighed, "—everything we had in the world, almost."
"I do not say that, but if there was a fraud, and it could be proved, it might not be too late."
The name of McSheen had given me a suspicion that all might not be straight. Nothing could be if he was connected with it. I recalled what Wolffert had told me of McSheen's selling out. Moreover, her story had unconsciously been a moving one. They had evidently been hardly used and, I believed, defrauded. So, when she pressed me, and promised if she were ever able to do so she "would reward me generously," as if, poor soul, she could ever reward any one save with her prayers, I undertook to look into the matter for them, and I began next day.