The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-10-04

a secret dfawer till you force me to bring 1t out. Push me to chancery and ruin. will you? I can 'ise thls oHi- dence to punish you or I can hold 1t over you to save myself. NJ one out old Lyon knows about the girls birth. No one but Scaddon can clinch the evidence about Bycliffe. an1 I've got Scaddon. No soul except Hyss. f knows that there is one-half dead life which may presently leave the girl new claim to the Bycliffe heirsaip.''
 Standing with his back to the can- dies. looking out into the dim lawn. he mediated. Quick thought gieamed over thirty-ffve years of a carb ,r filled with devices that were clever and pleasing enough for privi.e reflection, but not desirable for public knowledge. And now this Harold Transome threat ened to dras it all forth-threatened to sue him for an accounting of his administration of Transome's affairs! If 1t came to a question of right or wrong. tn ought he. the least admirable things were those he had done for the Transomes, It had been a deucedly unpleasant thing for him to have Harry Scaddon arrested and thrown into prison, hastening his death, when he knew that the man was Byc1iffe. Yet. if he had not done 1t, where would the Durfey- -Transomes be now. If the truth were known, the very posses sion of the estate by the present Dur fey-Transones was owing to the trick cry of nearly century ago, when the original old Durfey got his base-fee.
 Thinking it all over, he grew more and more indignant that he, who had saved the title to them, should now be threatened with ruin because he had repaid himself in a somewhat irregular manner. And his indignation verged into exasperation that Harold, precisely Harold Transome, should turn out to be the instrument of visitation. He thought of the time when In a brief season of uncalculating, foolish soft ness and passion he had laid the foun- dation for this very Ill luck. He was handsome. soft-eyed, slim Jermyn then. The portly, still handsome, but gray and unsentimental lawyer of 60 hated Harold Transome in that moment of retrospection.
 Mir. Jermyn's reasoning was as per feet as that of chess player. He saw the whole board before him, and knew just what knight and bishop and pawn to move to win. But, unfortu- nately for him, human pawns are not quite as devoid of volition as are chess men. There was one such human pawn which Jermyn had used so long that he quite forgot that he might play in the game himself instead of wait
  a cunning, prosperous pawn named Johnson--a lawyer, who had begun as Jermyn's tool and was his agent. He had been the making" of Johnson; and he never thought that Johnson might be like himself. entirely indif- ferent about those who had made him.
 Johnson had studied the Transome history in the service of Jermyn. He knew every detail of 1t. from the time when John Transome had entailed the estates on his son Thomas and heirs- male with remainder to the Bycliffes in fec He knew how the son had sold his own and his descendants rights to lawyer cousin, Durfey. from whom the present Transomes descended, be- ing thus really Durfeys and holding the name of Transome only from the estate. He knew that therefore, if the original line of Transome ever could be shown to have died out, the Durfey- -Transomes would have to re- linquish the estate to the Bycliffes.
 When Maurice Christian Bycliffe ar- rived in England to establish his claim. Johnson, as agent for Jermyn, had hunted out a living Transome--a poor, half witted fout. unable to read or write, ignorant of any claims to a great descent. having lost even his original name and passing under the name of
  descent, but the death of Maurice in prison had made the discovery use less-had. indeed. made 1t the wiser part to say nothing about 1t. and the fact remained a secret known only to Jermyn and Johnson.
 Trounsem suspected something after the inquiries had been started. but Jermyn kept him well supplied with liquor, and the old fellows talk made him merely the joke of Little Treby.
 While 1t was thought that the By cliffes had died out with Maurice Christian Bycliffe's death, the future existence or extinction of drunken old Trounsem was unimportant, since the Durfey- Transomes were secure in their title through the base, which could be sttacked only by Bycliffe. But now, with the knowledge of living daugh- ter of Byeliffe in Jermyn's possession l 1t needed only Trounsem death for | Jermyn to be able to oust the Durfey- Transomes from their holdings.
 All the knowledge of Mir Johnson | was quite useless to him without | knowledge that a Byclihe heir was liv- l ing, and Mir. Jsrmyn might have been | quite certain in his sole ownership of | that secret had his pawns not pos sessed brains, eyes and ears. But | when pawns make away from their | appointed posts the player who re- gards his passionate pieces with Tnath- | ematical contempt may get checkmated | suddenly.
 There came a great election In Lit | tie Treby, in which Harold Transome. | greatly to the affliction of his aristo cratic neighbors and to the bitter | humiliation of his proud mother, stood | for Parliament on the Radical side. | Christian, acting for his Tory masters. the Debarrys, gained the friendship of | old Tommy Trounsem, who was a. ting l as bill sticker for the Radicals. His | laudable design was to exchange the | Radical bills for others that maligned | them, knowing that Tommy would not | about his plans when Trounsem, in l drunken candor, told him all the old | story of how he had been sought out | by Jermyn and his agent Johnson, and | how he was re~ily a Transome and owned all the estate If only the law would let a poor man have his rights"
 Christian had heard the vague story of the Transome property It was one of the standard topics of discussion In A town where topics were few and well proven by constant use. It lost noth- ing in its savor by the fact that the posslps had little knowledge to go on. Thus Christian knew that the present Transomes held their little through the old base fee, and Tommy Trounsem's Incoherent talk showed him that he was important to Jermyn, and also that Bycliffe had made some claim. But all this did not help him.
 While his mind was full of the sub feet accident or blind destiny led him into a way where he met Esther Lyon.