emnant or
suggestion of a desire to impress his client with the suspicion that he
was earning his fee.

For fully a fortnight after my return from Cincinnati we were harassed
by the delays of the law, or, more exactly speaking, by the
exasperating crochets of the lawyer. Meanwhile there came letters of
anxious inquiry from our munificent friend Mr. Black, for that
estimable person, being aware of my predilection for ancient armor and
other curios, found it difficult to disabuse his mind of the suspicion
that his one thousand dollars might have been diverted from its
original purpose, and misappropriated to what he esteemed the uses of
folly. So it was with a feeling of great relief that finally I
apprised our generous friend by telegraph that the transaction had been
closed.

This end had not been reached, however, until Alice had put her
signature and her seal to a curiously-phrased document which served (as
I was told) as security to the widow Schmittheimer in case of "default
in payment of interest or principal." This instrument is called, as I
remember, a deed of trust, which seems to be another and a more polite
name for a mortgage.

I protested against Alice's putting her signature to this document,
which I still recognize as a covert foe to our happiness and
prosperity. But Mr. Denslow assured us that the proceeding was wholly
proper and businesslike, and Alice paid no heed to my expostulations.
Never before had I had any experience in matters or with instruments of
this kind, and I will admit that I have not even now any idea of what
the purport of the document in question is, further than a distinct
intuition that its involved syntax and complex and cloudy phraseology
bode no good.

As soon as the transaction was closed the widow Schmittheimer burst
into tears and loudly bewailed having parted with her home. I then
learned that for the last ten days she had been almost constantly
besieged by old friends of hers--the same who had been wont to consume
her coffee and her kuchen and who now regaled her (in compensation, as
it were, for her past hospitality) with reproachful assurances that she
had been virtually swindled out of her beautiful property. The grief
of this lonely and amiable woman touched me to the core, and I sought
to assuage her melancholy by telling her that we should expect her to
visit us, to which she replied amid tears and seeming gratitude that
she would be sure to call every Septe