Call it conspiracy if you like, or
organized hostility, I'm afraid it will require a lawyer rather than
an arbitrator to manage it, and the sooner the better. For the most
unpleasant thing about it is, that I can't find out exactly HOW BAD it
is!"
Unfortunately the weaker instinct of Harcourt's nature was first roused;
the vulgar rage which confounds the bearer of ill news with the
news itself filled his breast. "And this is all that your confounded
intermeddling came to?" he said brutally.
"No," said Grant quietly, with a preoccupied ignoring of the insult that
was more hopeless for Harcourt. "I found out that it is claimed that
this 'Lige Curtis was not drowned nor lost that night; but that he
escaped, and for three years has convinced another man that you are
wrongfully in possession of this land; that these two naturally hold you
in their power, and that they are only waiting for you to be forced into
legal proceedings for slander to prove all their charges. Until
then, for some reason best known to themselves, Curtis remains in the
background."
"Does he deny the deed under which I hold the property?" said Harcourt
savagely.
"He says it was only a security for a trifling loan, and not an actual
transfer."
"And don't those fools know that his security could be forfeited?"
"Yes, but not in the way it is recorded in the county clerk's office.
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