. It is now
twenty-five minutes past eight by the true time, as my watch has it.
At half past eight exactly I shall have the honor of bidding you good
evening, Miss Cynthia Badlam, whether you give me those papers or not.
I shall go to the office of Jacob Penhallow, Esquire, and there make
one of two communications to him; to wit, these papers and the facts
connected therewith, or another statement, the nature of which you may
perhaps conjecture."

There is no need of our speculating as to what Mr. Byles Gridley, an
honorable and humane man, would have done, or what would have been the
nature of that communication which he offered as an alternative to the
perplexed woman. He had not at any rate miscalculated the strength
of his appeal, which Cynthia interpreted as he expected. She bore the
heart-screw about two minutes. Then she took the package from her bosom,
and gave it with averted face to Master Byles Gridley, who, on receiving
it, made her a formal but not unkindly bow, and bade her good evening.

"One would think it had been lying out in the dew," he said, as he left
the house and walked towards Mr. Penhallow's residence.

CHAPTER XXXI. MASTER BYLES GRIDLEY CONSULTS WITH JACOB PENHALLOW, ESQUIRE

Lawyer Penhallow was seated in his study, his day's work over, his
feet in slippers, after the comfortable but inelegant fashion which Sir
Walter Scott reprobates, amusing himself with a volume of old Reports.
He was a knowing man enough, a keen country lawyer but honest, and
therefore less ready to suspect the honesty of others. He had a great
belief in his young partner's ability, and, though he knew him to be
astute, did not think him capable of roguery.

It was at his request that Mr. Bradshaw had undertaken his journey,
which, as he believed,--and as Mr. Bradshaw had still stronger evidence
of a strictly confidential nature which led him to feel sure,--would
end in the final settlement of the great land claim in favor of their
client. The case had been dragging along from year to year, like an
English chancery suit; and while courts and lawyers and witnesses had
been sleeping, the property had been steadily growing. A railroad had
passed close to one margin of the township, some mines had been opened
in the county, in which a village calling itself a city had grown big
enough to have a newspaper and Fourth of July orations. It was plain
that the successful issue of the long process would make the heirs of