w, took in him a milder and less criminal
turn. The old rascal, indeed, had so cleverly worded his deed of sale
as to obtain payment without transfer. It was a trifle easier to avoid
being specific in that country in his day than it is now, and the
document was, in my opinion, sufficiently vague to admit of a double
meaning. The original sale had been made to a man, now dead, whom the
railroad had bought out. The Copper Rise property was mentioned among
the other lands in the will in favor of Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, and
the latter had gone ahead improving them and increasing their output in
spite of the repeated threats of the railroad to bring suit. And it was
not until its present attorney had come in and investigated the title
that the railroad had resorted to the law. I mention here, by the way,
that my client was the sole heir.

But as the time of the sessions drew near, the outlook for me was
anything but bright. It is true that my witnesses were quite willing
to depose that his actions were queer and out of the common, but these
witnesses were for the most part venerable farmers and backwoodsmen:
expert testimony was deplorably lacking. In this extremity it was Mr.
Farquhar Fenelon Cooke himself who came unwittingly to my rescue. He had
bought a horse,--he could never be in a place long without one,--which
was chiefly remarkable, he said, for picking up his hind feet as well
as his front ones. However he may have differed from the ordinary run
of horses, he was shortly attacked by one of the thousand ills to which
every horse is subject. I will not pretend to say what it was. I found
Mr. Cooke one morning at his usual place in the Lake House bar holding
forth with more than common vehemence and profanity on the subject of
veterinary surgeons. He declared there was not a veterinary surgeon in
the whole town fit to hold a certificate, and his listeners nodded an
extreme approval to this sentiment. A grizzled old fellow who kept a
stock farm back in the country chanced to be there, and managed to get a
word in on the subject during one of my client's rare pauses.

"Yes," he said, "that's so. There ain't one of 'em now fit to travel
with young Doctor Vane, who was here some fifteen years gone by. He
weren't no horse-doctor, but he could fix up a foundered horse in a
night as good as new. If your uncle was livin', he'd back me on that,
Mr. Cooke."

Here was my chance. I took the old man aside, and two or three g