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 the late Malachi Withers possessors of an ample fortune, and it was also plain that the firm of Penhallow and Bradshaw were like to receive, in such case, the largest fee that had gladdened the professional existence of its members.

Mr. Penhallow had his book open before him, but his thoughts were wandering from the page.  He was thinking of his absent partner, and the probable results of his expedition.  What would be the consequence if all this property came into the possession of Silence Withers?  Could she have any liberal intentions with reference to Myrtle Hazard, the young girl who had grown up with her, or was the common impression true, that she was bent on endowing an institution, and thus securing for herself a favorable consideration in the higher courts, where her beneficiaries would be, it might be supposed, influential advocates?  He could not help thinking that Mr. Bradshaw believed