onvinced that trickery was at work I persuaded Winthrop to
let me see and photograph the adoption agreement. With that as a basis
I went straight to Pima, in Graham County, Arizona, where Frank
Hillery, the trapper, had died and Wiley professed to have run across
his papers. Hillery died only seven or eight months ago, you know, and
it wasn't difficult to find out all about him.

"He landed there in the spring of nineteen four, and opened a little
store with general merchandise. He was still keeping it when he was
stricken with typhoid last year and died. I readily found the widow
who had kept house for him all those years and interviewed his friends.
His long sojourn in the wilds evidently had their reaction when he
settled down in civilization once more, for he became exceedingly
garrulous, and his friends were familiar with every detail of his past
life. His favorite narrative was of the coming of Gentleman Geoff with
you to his cabin; of the death of his own little daughter and of
Gentleman Geoff's long illness and subsequent gratitude and generosity
to him. Your foster father, in recognition of his hospitality and
care, had given him sufficient money to start in business, and Hillery
never forgot it. When he died he left no papers except a brief will,
and his old trunks and boxes remained undisturbed in the attic, until
about three months ago when a strange young man appeared in Pima."

Thode paused and Willa caught her breath. She had momentarily
forgotten the narrator himself in her interest in his story, and the
quick color came and went in her cheeks. It seemed to the young
engineer that she bloomed like a splendid rose in the homely, bare
little room and the wistfulness deepened in his eyes, but he went on in
a sternly impersonal voice:

"The man was Wiley, under an assumed name, of course. He posed as a
nephew of the dead man, and when the beneficiaries found he had no
intention of attempting to dispute the will, being wealthy himself,
they gladly made friends with him and told him all they knew of his
late uncle.

"Wiley went to board with the widow, and it seemed only natural that he
should want to go through his uncle's effects. The widow gave him free
access to the attic, and it was there, in one of those boxes, that he
professed to find the packet of papers which he afterward produced.
Undoubtedly the marriage-certificate and the maps were genuine; only
the article of adoption had been add