"See her?" repeated the lawyer. "No; how could I? She's in Europe for educational advantages—at a convent somewhere, I believe."
"Oh," said Gerald, "a child, is she? I had fancied, I don't know why, that she was a grown-up young lady."
"I couldn't tell you what her age is, but it must be over twenty- one or she couldn't have executed the power of attorney, and that was looked into at the start and found quite regular."
"I see," replied Gerald slowly; but the topic had started Mr. Hall on a fresh trail, and he broke in—
"And it was the only thing in order in the whole business. Do you know we came within an ace of losing, all through their confounded careless way of keeping their papers?"
"How did they keep them?" inquired Gerald listlessly. The suit appeared to be a commonplace one, and the young man's interest began to wane.
"They didn't keep them at all," exclaimed Mr. Hall indignantly. "Fancy, the original deed—the old Spanish grant—the very keystone of our case, was not to be found till the last moment, and then only by the merest accident, and where do you suppose it was?"
"I haven't an idea," answered Gerald, stifling a yawn.
"At the back of an old print of the Madonna. It had been framed and hung up as an ornament, I suppose, Heaven knows when; and by- and-by some smart Aleck came along and thought the mother and child superior as a work of art and slapped it into the frame over the deed, and there it has hung for ten years anyhow."
"That's really very curious," said Gerald, whose attention began to revive as he saw a possible column to be compiled on the details of the case that had seemed so uninteresting to his contemporaries.