Before Dred Scott Slavery and Legal

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i

Before Dred Scott

Before Dred Scott draws on the freedom suits filed in the St. Louis
circuit court to construct a ground-​breaking history of slavery and
legal culture within the American Confluence, a vast region where the
Ohio, Mississippi, and the Missouri rivers converge. Formally divided
between slave and free territories and states, the American Confluence
was nevertheless a site where the borders between slavery and freedom,
like the borders within the region itself, were fluid. Such ambiguity pro-
duced a radical indeterminacy of status, which, in turn, gave rise to a
distinctive legal culture made manifest by the prosecution of hundreds
of freedom suits, including the case that ultimately culminated in the
landmark United States Supreme Court decision in Scott v. Sandford
(1857). Challenging dominant trends in legal history, Before Dred
Scott argues that this distinctive legal culture, above all, was defined
by ­ordinary people’s remarkable understanding of, and appreciation
for, formal law.

Anne Twitty is Associate Professor of History at the University of

Mississippi.
ii
iii

Cambridge Historical Studies in

American Law and Society

Recognizing legal history’s growing importance and influence, the goal of this
series is to chart legal history’s continuing development by publishing innovative
scholarship across the discipline’s broadening range of perspectives and subjects.
It encourages empirically creative works that take legal history into unexplored
subject areas, or that fundamentally revise our thinking about familiar topics; it
also encourages methodologically innovative works that bring new disciplinary
perspectives and techniques to the historical analysis of legal subjects.

Series Editor
Christopher Tomlins, University of California, Berkeley

Previously Published in the Series

Robert Deal, The Law of the Whale Hunt: Dispute Resolution, Property Law,
and American Whalers, 1780–​1880
Sandra F. Vanburkleo, Gender Remade: Citizenship, Suffrage, and Public Power
in the New Northwest, 1879–​1912
Reuel Schiller, Forging Rivals: Race, Class, Law, and the Collapse of Postwar
Liberalism
Ely Aaronson, From Slave Abuse to Hate Crime: The Criminalization of Racial
Violence in American History
Stuart Chinn, Recalibrating Reform: The Limits of Political Change
Ajay K. Mehrotra, Making the Modern American Fiscal State
Yvonne Pitts, Family, Law, and Inheritance in America: A Social and Legal
History of Nineteenth-​Century Kentucky
David M. Rabban, Law’s History
Kunal M. Parker, Common Law, History, and Democracy in America, 1790–​1900
Steven Wilf, Law’s Imagined Republic
James D. Schmidt, Industrial Violence and the Legal Origins of Child Labor
Rebecca M. McLennan, The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the
Making of the American Penal State, 1776–​1941
Tony A. Freyer, Antitrust and Global Capitalism, 1930–​2004
Davison Douglas, Jim Crow Moves North
Andrew Wender Cohen, The Racketeer’s Progress
Michael Willrich, City of Courts, Socializing Justice in Progressive Era Chicago
Barbara Young Welke, Recasting American Liberty: Gender, Law and the
Railroad Revolution, 1865–​1920
Michael Vorenberg, Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and
the Thirteenth Amendment
Robert J. Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and Free Labor in the Nineteenth Century
David M. Rabban, Free Speech in Its Forgotten Years
Jenny Wahl, The Bondsman’s Burden: An Economic Analysis of the Common
Law of Southern Slavery
Michael Grossberg, A Judgment for Solomon: The d’Hauteville Case and Legal
Experience in the Antebellum South

Most recently transmitted:

Sandra VanBurkleo, Gender Remade
iv
v

Before Dred Scott

Slavery and Legal Culture in the American
Confluence, 1787–​1857

ANNE TWITTY
University of Mississippi
vi

32 Avenue of the Americas, New York NY 10013

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/​9781107112063
© Anne Twitty 2016
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2016
Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books, Inc
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data
Names: Twitty, Anne Silverwood, 1980– author.
Title: Before Dred Scott : slavery and legal culture in the American
confluence, 1787–1857 / Anne Twitty, University of Mississippi.
Description: New York NY: Cambridge University Press, 2016. |
Series: Cambridge historical studies in American law and society |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016021097 | ISBN 9781107112063 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Slaves – Legal status, laws, etc. – Missouri – St. Louis
Region – History – 19th century. | Missouri. Circuit Court
(22nd Circuit) – History – 19th century.
Classification: LCC KF482.T87 2016 | DDC 342.7308/7–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016021097
ISBN 978-​1-​107-​11206-​3 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs
for external or third-​party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not
guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
vii

For Jonathan
viii
ix

Contents

List of Maps, Charts, and Tables page x

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1

Part I
1 A Radical Indeterminacy of Status 27
2 “With the Ease of a Veteran Litigant” 71
3 “By the Help of God and a Good Lawyer” 96

Part II
4 Slavery from Liberty to Equality 129
5 “Working His Emancipation” 155
6 Exploiting the Uncertainties of Federalism 180
7 Remembering Slavery and Freedom in the American
Confluence 210
Conclusion 233

Appendix 244
Index 275

ix
x

Maps, Charts, and Tables

Maps
1 The American Confluence, 1787–​1857 page 4

Charts
A.1 Freedom Suits Filed in the St. Louis Circuit Court,
1814–​1860 244
A.2 Outcomes of Freedom Suits Filed in the St. Louis Circuit
Court by Plaintiff, 1814–​1860 245

Tables
A.1 Outcomes of Freedom Suits Filed in the St. Louis Circuit
Court on the Basis of Plaintiffs’ Suit(s), 1814–​1860 245
A.2 Relationships between Plaintiffs in Freedom Suits Filed in
the St. Louis Circuit Court, 1814–​1860 246
A.3 St. Louis Freedom Suits and Participating Attorneys,
1814–1860 247
A.4 St. Louis Cases Excluded from Consideration as Freedom
Suits, 1814–1860 274

x
xi

Acknowledgments

I did not set out to become a historian of slavery or the law when I began
graduate school at Princeton University. But after some prodding, Chris
Stansell convinced me to take a look at a recently digitized collection of
freedom suits available through the St. Louis Circuit Court Historical
Records Project, and I have never looked back. As important as her role
as matchmaker was, however, her biggest contribution to my scholarly
development has been her infectious enthusiasm for this project and her
careful attention to the craft of historical writing. Under her guidance
I became a better, more judicious writer. Although her health has pre-
vented her from helping guide revisions, I hope she would be pleased with
the finished product. In one way or another, Dirk Hartog has inspired
much of what follows. His work continues to raise fascinating questions,
questions I hope to someday address with the same clarity and insight
his writing so regularly displays. Sean Wilentz has provided some much-​
needed encouragement at various stages of this very long process and has
served as a model of scholarly engagement. Stephanie McCurry offered
penetrating feedback and inspired a new resolve to draw out the larger
implications of my work. Also at Princeton, I had the privilege of work-
ing with Dan Rodgers, Phil Morgan, and Kevin Kruse, all of whom chal-
lenged me to think more rigorously about the past.
In the six years I spent in Princeton, I had the chance to be a part of a
wonderful, and wonderfully supportive, graduate program. I was lucky
to participate in a number of organizations and groups that gave me the
opportunity to leave the library behind, if only for a little while, includ-
ing the Modern America Workshop, the Princeton Program in American
Studies, the Graduate History Association, the Graduate Student

xi
xii

xii Acknowledgments

Government, Princeton Pro-​ Choice Vox, and the Diet of Dickinson.

I would especially like to thank Alex Bick, Dan Bouk, Pey-​Yi Chu, Will
Deringer, Carrie Eisert, Lo Faber, Christienna Fryar, Dov Grohsgal, Chin
Jou, Jamie Kreiner, Kyrill Kunkakhovich, Sarah Milov, Chris Moses, Dael
Norwood, Ben Schmidt, Chris Shannon, Jason Sharples, Jeris Stueland,
and Laura Weinrib, whose curiosity and friendship helped me grow
intellectually while also offering much-​needed relief from the stresses of
graduate school. Finally, as soon as I met Jessica Lowe we bonded over
a wide-​ranging set of common interests, historical and otherwise. Ever
since, her support –​as a reader, an editor, and, always, a sympathetic
ear –​has been absolutely indispensible.
Long before I began graduate school, I had excellent teachers who
put me on the path to academia. Tim Roberts made middle school bear-
able. Bill Jordan taught me the fundamentals of research, analysis, and
argumentation. Tyler Anbinder introduced me to the professional study
of history. And Gregg Bucken-​Knapp always encouraged me to apply to
Princeton –​albeit in political science.
I also had a fantastic group of friends whose loyalty and encourage-
ment has always been humbling. Jason Cabrera has bailed me out, bucked
me up, and generally come to my rescue more times than I can count. Ben
Johnson deserves much of the blame –​or credit –​for convincing me to
pursue a graduate degree in the humanities. Alex Michael could always
be counted on when the going got rough. And Sara Guccini and Justin
Oshana provided some much-​needed distractions.
A number of people have been essential to researching this project.
I am grateful for the help of Mike Everman and Pat Barge of the Missouri
State Archives-​St. Louis, the staff of the Missouri Historical Society in
St. Louis, Karen Glover of the Circuit Court of Bedford County, Virginia,
and Elder Robert Webb of the Primitive Baptist Library in Carthage,
Illinois, all of whom helped dig up documents along the way.
In the process of transforming what began as a dissertation into a
book, I have benefitted tremendously from the comments and advice of
an incredibly generous community of scholars. Kirt von Daacke, Sally
Hadden, Kelly Kennington, Rebecca Scott, Dylan Penningroth, and Kim
Welch have joined me on panels from San Francisco to Washington,
D.C. and forced me to think more carefully about how subordinated
people relate to and use the law. Stephen Aron, David Konig, and several
anonymous reviewers have helped strengthen this project immensely.
Cambridge University Press has proved an ideal home for my
work. Chris Tomlins, in his role as series editor, has been a committed
newgenprepdf
xiii

Acknowledgments xiii

advocate from the beginning, not only carefully shepherding the book to
a contract but also offering unusually comprehensive feedback. Debbie
Gershenowitz, Amanda George, and Ramesh Karunakaran, meanwhile,
ushered it through various stages of the publishing process with skill.
Raymond Doherty created a beautiful map for me. And Christine Rizzi
and Bryan Kessler stepped in at a critical juncture to provide much
needed editorial assistance.
It has been my great fortune that fate brought me to the University of
Mississippi. My colleagues and friends there have made me feel exceed-
ingly welcome. Jesse Cromwell, Oliver Dinius, Charles Eagles, Joshua
First, Darren Grem, April Holm, Vivian Ibrahim, Theresa Levitt, John
Neff, Paul Polgar, Antoinette Sutto, Joseph Ward, Jeff Watt, and Jessie
Wilkerson have all cheered me across the finish line, demonstrating again
and again how remarkably collegial our department is. Mikaëla Adams,
David Fragoso Gonzalez, Zack Kagan Guthrie, Melissa Ondrovcik, and
Nina Rifkind have been a constant source of camaraderie that has helped
me feel at home in Oxford. Marc Lerner, John Ondrovcik, Sheila Skemp,
and Jarod Roll deserve special mention, not only for their tremendous
friendship, but also for reading drafts of chapters, listening to me puzzle
through ideas, providing professional advice, and, throughout, offering
enthusiastic and resolute support for the project.
I sometimes marvel at my good fortune in winding up with such a
wonderful family. My grandparents –​John and Virginia Twitty and
Don and Mary Lee Sands –​spoiled me. They told me stories, read to
me, entertained me, and listened to me. Although none of them lived to
see this project completed, I think about them often. I could not have
asked for better parents. John Twitty fed my interest in history through-
out my childhood. Jean Twitty has been my faithful sounding board and
co-​conspirator. Their love has made this, and so much more, possible.
By all accounts, Jonathan Gienapp came into my life about midway
through this project, just as I was preparing to leave the east coast for
Mississippi. I do not remember meeting him, however, when our paths
crossed in April 2010 or October 2010. Fortunately, the third time was
the charm, because, in January 2013, when I encountered him yet again,
he stuck. It is a good thing, too, because it is hard to imagine that I would
have been able to complete this project without his encouragement and
support. Every day I am grateful for his incisive mind, his patience, his
faith in me, and his seemingly endless good cheer. This book is for him.
xiv
1

Introduction

One afternoon in November 1829 James Duncan crouched in a canoe in

the middle of the Mississippi River. Only a few hours before, Duncan’s
purported slave, Vincent, had filed suit against Duncan in the St. Louis
circuit court. Vincent alleged trespass, assault and battery, and false
imprisonment, technical terms that enabled him to seek something much
more elementary –​his freedom.1
This was not the first time Vincent had used the courts in an attempt
to free himself. Earlier that spring, Vincent had instituted his first freedom
suit –​a legal action in which those held as slaves asserted that they were
free people unlawfully held in bondage –​against another man, a man he
claimed had hired his time.2 Because the defendant in this matter could
not, in fact, legally claim ownership over him, however, it went nowhere.
Vincent eventually had the case discontinued.3
When James Duncan learned that Vincent had filed a second freedom
suit that named him as the defendant, he was no doubt desperate to frus-
trate the enslaved man’s efforts. First, Duncan cuffed Vincent and found
a man with a dirk to guard him. Apparently under the assumption that
he was about to be taken into custody, Duncan then paddled out into the

1
Vincent, a man of color v. Duncan, James, November 1829, Case No. 110, St. Louis Circuit
Court Historical Records Project, Circuit Court Case Files, Office of the Circuit Clerk,
City of St. Louis, Missouri, http://​stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu (hereafter SLCCHRP), 63.
2
Vincent, a free person of color v. Jerry, a free person of color, July 1829, Case No. 14,
SLCCHRP. Jerry, the defendant in Vincent’s first suit, was a former slave of the Duncan
family. For more information on why Vincent may have filed suit against Jerry, see
Chapters 2 and 5.
3
Missouri State Archives-St. Louis, Circuit Court Record Book No. 5, November 24, 1829,
410–411.

1
2

2 Before Dred Scott

river – convinced, it would seem, that the court’s jurisdiction ended at the
water’s edge.
Such was the scene, in any case, when St. Louis county deputy sher-
iff David Cuyler arrived with an order that barred James Duncan from
removing Vincent from St. Louis. Cuyler was attempting to assure Duncan
that he did not intend to take him in when a fifth man, Isaac Letcher,
who had once hired Vincent to labor at his brickwork, emerged from
the brush to enquire whether there would be any “danger” if Duncan
returned to shore.4 With the repetition of Cuyler’s assurances, Duncan
finally relented. Once he reached the riverbank, some portion of this mot-
ley crew –​Duncan and Vincent at the very least –​proceeded to the county
courthouse, where Duncan presented Vincent to the judge.
James Duncan and Vincent waged their own particular war against
one another in the courts, but in many ways they were typical. In count-
less encounters in the American Confluence –​a vast region where the
Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Missouri rivers converge –​ordinary indi-
viduals, those without formal legal training, repeatedly demonstrated the
breadth and depth of their legal knowledge of slavery and slaveholding.5
Duncan’s efforts to avoid David Cuyler’s writ may have played as broad
comedy, a ham-​fisted attempt to ensure he did not wind up in a jail cell.
His actions, however, as well as those of all the others who had gathered

4
Isaac Letcher, who was listed as a brickmaker in an 1836–​1837 city directory, had appar-
ently employed Vincent for a single day sometime in 1827 or 1828. Charles K. Keemle,
The St. Louis Directory for the Years 1836-​7 (St. Louis: C. Keemle, 1836), 16; Vincent
v. Duncan, SLCCHRP, 63. Letcher knew the legal process well, having been party to a
number of cases himself. By 1829, when he intervened in Vincent’s case, he had filed at
least three civil suits in St. Louis and had been named as defendant in four additional
civil and criminal proceedings. United States v. Letcher, Isaac A., August 1820 [case num-
ber unavailable], Circuit Court Case Files, Office of the Circuit Clerk, City of St. Louis,
Missouri (hereafter SLCCCF); Miller, Daniel v. Letcher, Isaac A., July 1828, Case No.
257, SLCCCF; Letcher, Isaac A. v. O’Fallon, John, July 1827, Case No. 25, SLCCCF;
Steen, Enoch, Administrator v. Letcher, Isaac A., July 1827, Case No. 30, SLCCCF;
Robinson, Thomas v. Letcher, Isaac A., November 1828, Case No. 66, SLCCCF; State
of Missouri v. Letcher, Isaac A.; Miller, James W.; Steward, Henry, November 1828 [case
number unavailable], SLCCCF; Letcher, Isaac A. v. Dugal, Xavier, July 1829, Case No.
20, SLCCCF.
5
The term “American Confluence” was pioneered by Stephen Aron to reference the
Missouri and Mississippi River Valleys, a region elsewhere referred to as the American
Bottoms. I have applied the term more broadly in this work. Stephen Aron, American
Confluence: The Missouri Frontier, from Borderland to Border State (Bloomington,
Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2006).
3

Introduction 3

on the shores of the Mississippi River that day, were based on a sophisti-
cated understanding of the law.
Drawing on a collection of 282 freedom suits filed in the St. Louis
circuit court between 1814 and 1860, this book explores how ordi-
nary people absorbed the law, and how the law, in turn, shaped the
social and cultural histories of slavery and slaveholding in the American
Confluence.6 To understand the legal culture constructed by the region’s
residents is to understand how the law was used, to imagine not only
the purposes to which men like James Duncan, Vincent, or any of the
other three men who gathered on the banks of the Mississippi that
day thought it could be put, but also the way it constrained and made
possible a range of actions, how it might be employed or skirted.
Despite distinctions of status and race, those who lived in the American
Confluence –​masters, slaves, and indentured servants, as well as free
black people and their white neighbors –​shared a common legal cul-
ture, one rooted in knowledge of territorial and state statutes as well as
the legal mechanisms that defined the institutions of slavery and slave-
holding in the region.
Encompassing portions of present-​ day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Kentucky, and Missouri, the American Confluence was part free and part
slave. The Northwest Ordinance, adopted in 1787, ensured that the states
carved out of the Northwest Territory –​the first three of which, Ohio,
Indiana, and Illinois, were admitted in 1803, 1816, and 1818 –​prohib-
ited slavery. Kentucky and Missouri, meanwhile, entered the Union as
slave states in 1792 and 1821.
While these two competing normative orders met in the American
Confluence, the region was nevertheless defined by its fluidity. Although
the rivers that traversed it, especially the Ohio River, have often
been imagined as borders, the waterways that defined the American
Confluence functioned more like corridors. The region may have been
carved into slave territories and states and free territories and states,
but the border between slavery and freedom was regularly traversed by
masters, slaves, and indentured servants, as well as all those they came
into contact with.
What emerged in the American Confluence, as a result, was a pecu-
liar mixture of slavery and freedom, one that rendered the region part

6
For a complete list of all the freedom suits analyzed in this book and the methodology
employed in compiling that list, see Tables A.3 and A.4.
4

4 Before Dred Scott

Map 1. The American Confluence, 1787–​1857.

Source: Map prepared by Raymond Doherty.

free and part slave in an altogether different sense. Slavery and inden-
tured servitude, after all, were salient features of not only the region’s
slave territories and states, but also its free territories and states. Long
before the passage of the Northwest Ordinance, many French settlers
held slaves in Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Cahokia; long after the passage
of the Ordinance, residents of what would become Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois, the latter especially, fought to protect the institution or settled,
instead, for a form of indentured servitude that closely resembled slavery.
At the same time, opposition to the institution was not only voiced in the
region’s free territories and states, but also its slave territories and states.
Slaveholders in Kentucky and Missouri occasionally raised concerns
about the morality of the institution while their nonslaveholding neigh-
bors, who generally resented the concentration of land and wealth that
slaveholding encouraged, often espoused a kind of popular antislavery.7

7
On the widespread practice of slaveholding and indentured servitude in what became the
Northwest Territory, see N. Dwight Harris, The History of Negro Servitude in Illinois, and
5

Introduction 5

Both slavery and freedom in the region, moreover, were more ambigu-
ous than elsewhere in the United States. There were fewer slaves and
slaveholders in the region than there were further south and east, and the
advantages slaveholders in other parts of the country enjoyed over their
slaves –​by virtue of law, custom, or force –​frequently broke down. Some
masters in the region, in fact, lost perpetual rights of ownership over their
slaves when they indentured them. Even when slaveholders held fast to
them, however, the American Confluence was a place where slaves might
attain an ever-​greater degree of autonomy. Many, especially enslaved men
but occasionally enslaved women as well, were engaged in occupations
that took them out of their masters’ households. Indeed, many slaves in the
American Confluence had relatively little contact with their masters since
slaveholders commonly rented their slaves’ labor for weeks, months, or
even years at a time. Hired out to the region’s lead mines, salines, farms,
households, or steamboats, moreover, these men and women sometimes
worked alongside free black and white laborers and had the opportunity
to earn their own money. Other slaves, those who were not hired out,
often lived on intimate terms with their masters. Bound to their slaves by
dependence or lust, masters in such circumstances might come to view
such slaves more like children and slaves might come to look on masters
more like lovers. In such a world, where the boundary between slavery
and freedom could be so ambiguous, slaves might be transformed into
indentured servants or eventually claim their freedom, but they might just
as easily see their privileges stripped away when the whims of a master or
the exigencies of the market intervened.
It was no coincidence, in other words, that hundreds of plaintiffs –​
including Dred Scott, whose case would result in the nation’s most
infamous US Supreme Court decision –​ultimately petitioned for their
freedom in its unofficial capitol, St. Louis. As a bustling frontier town on
the very border of a border state, and later, a commercial hub of the West,

of the Slavery Agitation in that State, 1719–​1864 (Chicago: A.C. McClurg and Company,
1904); Emma Lou Thornborough, The Negro in Indiana: The Study of a Minority
(Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Publications, 1957); Paul Finkelman, “Evading
the Ordinance: The Persistence of Bondage in Indiana and Illinois,” Journal of the Early
Republic 9 (Spring 1989), 23–​51; Matthew Salafia, Slavery’s Borderland: Freedom and
Bondage Along the Ohio River (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
For information about the antislavery views of those who settled in Kentucky, see Stephen
Aron, How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to
Henry Clay (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 89–​93. On the lukewarm
commitment Missourians showed toward slavery, see Diane Mutti Burke, On Slavery’s
Border: Missouri’s Small-​Slaveholding Households, 1815–​1865 (Athens, Ga.: University
of Georgia Press, 2010), 28–​29.
6

6 Before Dred Scott

St. Louis was an obvious site for these battles to take place.8 The city’s
size and growing importance, after all, drew thousands of new inhabit-
ants every year while its location ensured that a number of slaves who
were drawn into its orbit had already spent time on the nominally free
soil of the Northwest Territory, an experience that would enable them
to prosecute a freedom suit. Its circuit court, moreover, was subject to a
variety of emancipatory precedents established by the Missouri Supreme
Court over the course of the early national and antebellum eras, and the
city itself boasted a large population of attorneys who proved more than
willing to represent those who sued for their freedom. The widespread
practice of hiring out, meanwhile, common in the American Confluence
as a whole but even more prevalent in a city like St. Louis, meant that
slaves in the city, like urban slaves elsewhere, had greater autonomy from
their masters than their counterparts in the countryside and, therefore,
better access to both the judicial system and legal representation.
The proliferation of freedom suits in the St. Louis circuit court, how-
ever, was also the result of the legal literacy acquired by the region’s slaves
and indentured servants. To some extent, the legal knowledge displayed
by such individuals was a product of their status as such. Slaves and
indentured servants in the American Confluence, for instance, like others
held in bondage throughout the United States, were intimately familiar
with the role law played in shaping their lives because, as property, they
could be sold, mortgaged, collateralized, or put in trust, any one of which
might upend their lives.9 But those in the region, far more than unfree
laborers in much of the rest of the nation, enjoyed greater opportuni-
ties to manipulate the law for their own benefit. They discovered –​and
employed –​statutes that could effect their freedom, obtained competent
counsel, and tracked down sympathetic witnesses. They endeavored to
keep out of the clutches of their masters’ creditors and, cognizant of the
emancipatory power of residence on supposedly free soil, they sought
opportunities to travel to or remain in free territories or states, an action
that might lay the groundwork for a freedom suit.

8
When Missouri was recognized as a territory in 1807, it was little more than a regional
backwater, home to just over a thousand people, but by 1860 the city was the eighth larg-
est in the United States, with more than 160,000 residents.
9
Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 186–​187; Ariela Gross, “The Law and Culture
of Slavery: Natchez, Mississippi,” in Local Matters: Race, Crime, and Justice in the
Nineteenth-​Century South, ed. Christopher Waldrep and Donald G. Niemann (Athens,
Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 105–​106.
7

Introduction 7

Like slaves and indentured servants, the region’s masters as well as

its free black and nonslaveholding white residents learned about the law
through a combination of their own experiences with unfreedom and
the distinctive characteristics of the American Confluence. Masters, after
all, were fully cognizant of the economic and social value of their slaves
and indentured servants and worked hard to maintain their property in a
region where doing so could prove challenging. They learned to buy, sell,
bequeath, mortgage, and occasionally indenture their slaves according
to legal form. They discovered how long and under what circumstances
they could take their slaves to free territories and states without forfeit-
ing ownership. And they became skilled at sheltering their slaves –​almost
always their most valuable possessions –​from seizure by creditors by
executing trusts and moving from jurisdiction to jurisdiction to prevent
process from being served. Others in the region who regularly interacted
with slaves, indentured servants, and their masters, absorbed the laws
and precedents that governed both. Such individuals learned the finer
points of sojourning, the legally sanctioned practice of taking a slave to
a free territory or state, and the significance the courts placed on intent
when determining whether a slaveholder had illegally introduced slavery
to supposedly free soil by establishing a residence with his slaves. They
also dispensed legal advice about how to indenture slaves and occasion-
ally acted as witnesses and deponants when freedom suits arose.10

For the last three decades, legal historians, particularly those who have
studied the early national and antebellum United States, have increas-
ingly focused their attention on “legalities” rather than “law.” Instead
of examining statues, precedents, and formal legal proceedings, in other
words, they have concentrated, as one such scholar has noted, on “the
symbols, signs, and instantiations of formal law’s classificatory impulse,
the outcomes of its specialized practices, the products of its institutions”
as well as any “repetitive practice of wide acceptance within a specific
locale.”11 In doing so, these scholars have made at least two important

10
White residents of the American Confluence, to be sure, gave testimony in freedom suits
with far more regularity than their black counterparts because people of African descent
were banned from doing so when any party to a suit was white. In a handful of freedom
suits in which there was a black defendant, however, black residents could and did par-
ticipate as witnesses and deponants.
11
Christopher L. Tomlins, “Introduction: The Many Legalities of Colonization: A Manifesto
of Destiny for Early American Legal History,” in The Many Legalities of Early America,
ed. Christopher L. Tomlins and Bruce H. Mann (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2001), 2–​3.
8

8 Before Dred Scott

contributions. First, they have enabled us to answer questions that had

previously been opaque or invisible. Without a broader understanding of
what constituted law, for instance, historians would not have been able to
explain how the people of nineteenth-​century New York City famously
established a right to keep pigs simply by doing so or how American
slaves, who were defined as property could nevertheless own property.12
Second, they have dramatically expanded the cast of characters who pop-
ulate legal history. The field is no longer the sole domain of lawyers and
judges. Ordinary people –​those who lacked any formal education about
the law –​have been afforded a primary place in legal history as well.
Legal pluralism, however, has its dangers. Like the Foucauldian under-
standing of power or the conception of republicanism advanced by
J. G. A. Pocock, Gordon Wood, and others, its ubiquity can diminish its
explanatory potential: if law is everywhere it is also nowhere; by trying to
explain everything it explains nothing.13 Additionally, while legal plural-
ism has permitted early national and antebellum scholars to address not
only new lines of inquiry but also a much larger swath of the population,
it has, at the same time, generally suggested that ordinary people were
locked in a largely antagonistic relationship with formal law. As a result,
legal historians have seemingly faced a dilemma: either focus on formal
law at the expense of ordinary people, or make ordinary people lead-
ing protagonists at the expense of formal law. And they have repeatedly
chosen the latter over the former. The balance of much American legal
history, in other words, has shifted so fully toward a study of alterna-
tive legal culture that, notwithstanding the real benefits of that approach,
there is often little room for an examination of how ordinary people
engaged, learned, and employed formal law.14

12
Hendrik Hartog, “Pigs and Positivism,” Wisconsin Law Review 4 (July 1985), 899–​
935; Dylan C. Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and
Community in the Nineteenth-​Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2003).
13
On the dangers of stretching these particular paradigms too far see Daniel T. Rodgers,
The Age of Fracture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011), c­hapter 3;
Daniel T. Rodgers, “Republicanism: The Career of a Concept,” Journal of American
History 79 (June 1992), 11–​38.
14
Some of the work that has adopted legal pluralism as the primary framework through
which to understand early national and antebellum American law has explicitly pos-
ited a hostile relationship between ordinary people and formal law, see, especially, the
extremely influential Laura F. Edwards, The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and
the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-​Revolution South (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2009). Much other scholarship in this voluminous and growing lit-
erature has been less explicit about such hostility, but in similarly asserting the prevalence
9

Introduction 9

The reality, however, is that some historical problems –​including an

analysis of the freedom suits filed in the St. Louis circuit court before
Dred Scott –​simply cannot be understood without considering how for-
mal law was embraced by ordinary people. To be sure, those who peti-
tioned for their freedom clearly did so for reasons that had little to do
with a deep or abiding respect for statute and precedent –​they did not, in
short, file suit to venerate the law. The very practice of slavery and slave-
holding in much of the American Confluence, moreover, was in direct
violation of formal law. But one can nonetheless only make sense of their
actions and their incredible ability to manipulate the law if one reckons
with their detailed knowledge of it. Although their motives sprang from
many sources, the tactics and techniques they deployed to secure those
ends betrayed a remarkable legal know-​how.

The right to petition for one’s freedom in the St. Louis circuit court
was a right that was centuries in the making. The ability to do so was
ostensibly rooted in a fourteenth-​century English law that entitled a serf
to seek redress in the king’s courts if he or she alleged illegal detain-
ment.15 Thereafter, the right to petition for one’s freedom was imported
to England’s North American colonies, where those who filed suit were
no longer white serfs but black slaves. The first such cases were filed in
the Chesapeake during the middle of the seventeenth century, but plain-
tiffs subsequently petitioned for their freedom in the Middle-​Atlantic and
New England as well.16

of alternative legal orders has ended up implying as much. See, for instance, Hartog,
“Pigs and Positivism”; Tomlins and Mann, eds., Many Legalities; Penningroth, Claims
of Kinfolk; Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America
and Australia, 1788-​1836 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010); Aaron
T. Knapp, “Law’s Revolution: Benjamin Austin and the Spirit of 86,” Yale Law Review
25 (Summer 2013), 271–​358; Thomas C. Mackey, “It cant be cald stealin’: Customary
Law among Civil War Soldiers,” in Making Legal History: Essays in Honor of William
E. Nelson ed. Daniel J. Hulsebosch, R.B. Bernstein (New York: New York University
Press, 2013), 49–​74.
15
Jonathan L. Alpert, “The Origin of Slavery in the United States –​The Maryland
Precedent,” The American Journal of Legal History 14 (July 1970), 189.
16
On freedom suits in the mid-​Atlantic and Chesapeake, see Tommy L. Bogger, Free Blacks
in Norfolk, Virginia: The Darker Side of Freedom (Charlottesville, Va.: University of
Virginia Press, 1997), 94–​96; T. Stephen Whitman, The Price of Freedom: Slavery and
Manumission in Baltimore and Early National Maryland (Lexington, Ky.: University
of Kentucky Press, 1997), 63–​ 67; Michael L. Nicholls, “‘The Squint of Freedom’:
African-​American Freedom Suits in Post-​Revolutionary Virginia,” Slavery and Abolition
20 (August 1999), 47–​ 62; Thomas F. Brown and Leah C. Simms, “‘To Swear Him
Free’: Ethnic Memory as Social Capital in Eighteenth-​ Century Freedom Petitions,”
10

10 Before Dred Scott

In 1807, shortly after the Louisiana Purchase, enslaved people who

resided in the territory west of the Mississippi River were explicitly
authorized to initiate freedom suits by territorial statute. “An Act to
Enable Persons Held in Slavery to Sue for their Freedom,” like similar
laws elsewhere, enabled any slave within the Missouri Territory to peti-
tion the general court or any court of common pleas as a pauper. This
law suggested that freedom suits might take the form of an action for
assault and battery as well as false imprisonment, that is, that the plaintiff
in such cases would assert that he or she had been injured by the defen-
dant. It required, moreover, that the matter would be tried like other civil
proceedings in which there were two white parties. If a judge found a
petition to sue sufficient, the law held that he was responsible for assign-
ing counsel and ensuring that the plaintiff could meet with this court-​
appointed attorney as needed. This statute also made it illegal for the
plaintiff to be either removed from the court’s jurisdiction while the case
was pending or “subjected to any severity because of his or her applica-
tion for freedom,” and permitted judges to require defendants to enter
into recognizance if they feared that their orders might be violated. In
the event that the defendant refused to do so, the judge was authorized
to have the plaintiff taken into custody and hired out until the case could
be decided. Finally, according to the statute, if the plaintiff was able to
demonstrate –​to a judge or a jury –​that he or she had been wrongfully
enslaved, the court had the power to free not only the plaintiff, but, if the
plaintiff was female, any of her children as well.17 Revisions to this law
shortly after Missouri attained statehood were limited, but, on the whole,
rendered freedom suits even more attractive. If the 1824 statute authoriz-
ing freedom suits required rather than merely suggested that a would-​be
plaintiff’s suit would allege trespass in addition to assault and battery and
false imprisonment, it also permitted those whose suits were successful

in Colonial Chesapeake: New Perspectives, ed. Debra Meyers and Mélanie Perreault
(Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006), 81–​ 112; Honor Sachs,
“‘Freedom by a Judgment’: The Legal History of an Afro-​Indian Family,” Law and History
Review 30 (February 2012), 173–​ 203; Loren Schweninger, “Freedom Suits, African
American Women, and the Genealogy of Slavery,” The William and Mary Quarterly 71
(January 2014), 35–​62. On freedom suits in New England, see George Henry Moore,
Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts (New York: D. Appleton and Company,
1866), 111–​147; Arthur Zilversmit, “Quok Walker, Mumbet, and the Abolition of Slavery
in Massachusetts,” The William and Mary Quarterly 25 (October 1968), 614–​624; Emily
Blanck, “Seventeen Eighty-​Three: The Turning Point in the Law of Slavery and Freedom
in Massachusetts,” The New England Quarterly 75 (March 2002), 24–​51.
17
“An Act to Enable Persons Held in Slavery to Sue for Their Freedom,” Laws of the
Territory of Louisiana, ­chapter 35 (June 27, 1807).
11

Introduction 11

to claim damages “as in other cases.”18 This law remained unchanged

for more than two additional decades, until, in 1845, the state legisla-
ture adopted a new statute authorizing freedom suits. Although this law
made suing for one’s freedom less appealing by rescinding the ability of
plaintiffs in such matters to recover compensation and obligating them
to provide a bond that would cover costs in the event that they lost, the
right to do so nevertheless remained intact.19
As comprehensive as these statutes were in specifying the form free-
dom suits took and the rights and responsibilities of those who peti-
tioned, however, they were silent on the circumstances that might enable
a court to decide that a plaintiff had been improperly held. The acts of
1807 and 1824, for instance, offered no criteria for determining whether
or not a plaintiff was entitled to his or her freedom. Missouri’s slave code,
moreover, which largely mirrored the one that had been imposed on the
whole of the District of Louisiana in 1804, was equally useless: it failed
to specify who was and who was not a slave.20 As a result, judges were
left to figure out for themselves how to interpret such statutes. Without
guidance, practice and precedent, rather than legislation, came to dictate
the possible reasons a petition for freedom could be filed.
Although, broadly speaking, freedom suits filed in the St. Louis circuit
court were based on one of three grounds – p ​ rior residence in a free ter-
ritory or state, previous emancipation, or free birth – ​neither the lived
experience of those who sued for their freedom nor the early national
and antebellum case files their efforts produced was ever quite so neat
as such categories suggest. Some plaintiffs, after all, could readily claim
more than one basis for the freedom suits they initiated. Others, in some-
times-​longwinded petitions, might lay out a variety of reasons why they
felt themselves entitled to freedom, hoping at least one of them would
persuade the court to permit their cause to go forward. In such instances,
judges never clarified which claims had convinced them to authorize
such suits, nor, in bench trials, did they explain the reasoning behind
their rulings. Cases that resulted in jury trials provided somewhat more
information, because attorneys jockeyed to have their instructions read
to the jurors. But in such instances, as in bench trials, judges provided

18
“An Act to Enable Persons Held in Slavery to Sue for Their Freedom,” Laws of the State
of Missouri (December 30, 1824).
19
“An Act to Enable Persons Held in Slavery to Sue for Their Freedom,” Laws of the State
of Missouri (February 13, 1845).
20
Harrison A. Trexler, Slavery in Missouri, 1804–​1865 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1914), 58.
12

12 Before Dred Scott

no justification for any decisions they rendered. Why they accepted one
jury instruction while they rejected another must remain a matter of
conjecture. All of which is to say that determining a single basis upon
which a given plaintiff’s freedom suit was based proves impossible in
some instances.
Cases that alleged prior residence in a free territory or state were based
on the notion that slaves became entitled to their freedom as a result of
an extended stay on free soil –​even if they later returned to a jurisdiction
where slavery was permitted. This doctrine, known as “once free, always
free,” originated in a late-​eighteenth-​century English freedom suit known
as Somerset v. Stewart (1772). In the decades that followed, jurists in
several slaveholding states enshrined the principle in American law.21 In
Missouri, “once free, always free” was first legitimized by a state Supreme
Court ruling in Winny v. Whitesides (1824), a freedom suit on appeal
from the St. Louis circuit court that was based on the plaintiff’s residence
with her master in Illinois. Subsequent rulings on St. Louis freedom suits
for much of the early national and antebellum eras signaled not only the
court’s commitment to this doctrine, but also its willingness to define
residence broadly, which encouraged the proliferation of freedom suits
based on such grounds.22 Two other decisions, for instance, in Vincent v.
Duncan (1830) and Ralph v. Duncan (1833), established that hiring one’s
slaves to labor in the Northwest Territory, or any state carved out of it,
likewise effected their emancipation.23 In rulings on two more St. Louis
freedom suits, meanwhile, Julia v. McKinney (1836) and Wilson v. Melvin
(1837), the court asserted that even an unnecessary delay while transport-
ing slaves across free soil would effect their freedom.24 Finally, in Rachel
v. Walker (1836), yet another St. Louis freedom suit, the court held that
a slaveholder’s compulsory service at a military post in the Northwest

21
Somerset v. Stewart, Loft 1, 499-​510 (1772). For a consideration of the Somerset case
and its implications in the United States see A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., In the Matter of
Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1978), 313–​368; Edlie L. Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free: Atlantic
Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Culture of Travel (New York: New York University Press,
1999), ­chapter 1; Derek A. Webb, “The Somerset Effect: Parsing Lord Mansfield’s Words
on Slavery in Nineteenth-​Century America,” Law and History Review 32 (August 2014),
455–​490.
22
Winny v. Whitesides, 1 Mo. 472–​476 (1824). On the relationship between the Missouri
Supreme Court’s decision in Winny v. Whitesides and Somerset v. Stewart, see Paul
Finkelman, “The Dred Scott Case, Slavery, and the Politics of Law,” Hamline Law
Review 20 (Fall 1996), 1–42.
23
Vincent v. Duncan, 2 Mo. 214–​217 (1830) and Ralph v. Duncan, 3 Mo. 194–​196 (1833).
24
Julia v. McKinney, 3 Mo. 270–​275 (1836) and Wilson v. Melvin, 4 Mo. 592–​597 (1837).
13

Introduction 13

Territory did not insulate his slave from the emancipatory laws therein.25
Such precedents remained intact until the middle of the 1840s, when the
court began chipping away at the notion that the Northwest Ordinance
had the power to free every slave who resided there, however briefly.26
The idea that a slave who had been previously emancipated was enti­
tled to his or her freedom –​the second grounds upon which freedom
suits filed in the St. Louis circuit court were based –​was comparatively
straightforward from a legal standpoint. The vast majority of such peti-
tioners claimed that they had been emancipated either by will or by deed,
but a number of other circumstances might have led one to claim prior
manumission as well. Some argued that they had contracted with their
masters to purchase their freedom and had already paid some or all of
the agreed-​upon price without being liberated. Others asserted that they
were entitled to their freedom because they had been sold under the con-
dition that they would be freed at a specified time that had come and
gone. Still more argued that, as indentured servants whose terms had
ended, they could no longer be legally held to service. Finally, a handful
claimed that they had already won a freedom suit in another jurisdiction
or that their enslavement had legally ended when they were imported
into a slaveholding state that had banned the introduction of additional
slaves for the purpose of sale.27 In contrast to residence on free soil, prior
manumission entitled a plaintiff to his or her freedom on its face. Those
who based their cases on such claims, after all, were, by definition, free
people. As a result, to the extent that freedom suits that revolved around
previous emancipation were appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court,
the only questions they posed were related to the legitimacy of the vari­
ous instruments that had supposedly freed them. At issue, in other words,
was whether a particular will, contract, or bill of sale had been created

25
Rachel v. Walker, 4 Mo. 350–​354 (1836).
26
The two cases that inaugurated this process, Chouteau v. Pierre and Charlotte
v. Chouteau, were not, however, filed by slaves who had been taken to the Northwest
Territory themselves. Both of these cases were instead initiated by siblings whose mother
had resided in the region long before their birth. See Chouteau v. Pierre, 9 Mo. 3–​9
(1845); Charlotte v. Chouteau, 11 Mo. 193–​200 (1847).
27
Two plaintiffs who sued for their freedom in the St. Louis circuit court, Jane Brown and
Caroline Bascom, claimed that they had been illegally imported into slaveholding states.
The two states in question, Virginia and Delaware, had both forbidden slaveholders
from introducing additional slaves if they planned to sell them. Delaware also banned
masters from bringing slaves to the state for the purpose of residence. Brown, Jane (also
known as Jinny), woman of color v. Sturges, Francis I., November 1844, Case No. 173,
SLCCHRP; Bascom, Caroline, a free mulatto woman v. Ferguson, John H., April 1846,
Case No. 20, SLCCHRP.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 "My dear sir," he said, "you must make the time, and as for the money,
that is my affair, as the solicitor for the defence. I will pay a hundred into
your account this afternoon, if you will tell me where you bank."

"That simplifies things for me," said Melville, imparting the necessary
information without too much alacrity, but yet making sure that Mr. Tracy
should make no mistake as to which branch of the bank he honoured with
his custom. "I don't see why I shouldn't confess to you that I am hard up,
and Sir Geoffrey's will was like a blow between the eyes."

"It was an amazing business," Mr. Tracy admitted. "About this Lady
Holt, Mr. Ashley; had you any idea of her existence?"

"Not the faintest," said Melville unblushingly.

"Nor why you should be excluded from the will? Pardon me, if I seem
to be asking too much."

"The whole thing was like a bolt from the blue," Melville replied. "As a
matter of fact I had been on particularly good terms with my uncle just
lately, which makes it all the more incomprehensible to me. By the way," he
added, with the charm of manner which he knew so well how to assume
upon occasion, "I hope you will forget what I said to Ralph after you read
the will that day. I was horribly mortified, and I daresay I said more than I
really meant."

"Whatever you might have said I should have attributed to a very

natural disappointment," Mr. Tracy said pleasantly. "That is all forgotten, so
far as I am concerned, and I know I may call upon you now with
confidence."

"With perfect confidence," Melville answered. "If you think I may be

able to find out anything by pottering about Fairbridge, I'll go down and
begin operations to-morrow, but I'm not sanguine."

"At any rate, your evidence will be valuable to show the terms on which
your brother stood with your uncle. They were always particularly good
friends, weren't they?"
 "Yes," said Melville moodily. "Ralph was always Sir Geoffrey's
favourite."

"And he was delighted, I know, about your brother's engagement to

Miss Austen," Mr. Tracy continued, unconsciously rubbing salt into
Melville's sores. "It was his intention to make most handsome settlements,
which would have rendered the young couple quite independent."

"I daresay," said Melville. "Well, there it is. I am quite ready to testify
that Ralph was always like a very affectionate son to Sir Geoffrey, and that,
as far as I can see, there was not only no reason why he should commit such
a crime as he is alleged to have committed, but every reason why he
shouldn't. Ralph and I have never been very chummy, but nobody would do
more to clear him of this preposterous charge than I would. That goes
without saying. What makes me want to kick myself is that I can't do
something that seems more practical than simply go into court and say what
everybody knows already."

"It will all help," said Mr. Tracy; "and, after all, the burden of proof
rests on the prosecution."

"Quite so," said Melville. "That was my point at the start. I don't see
how evidence can be manufactured, and unless it can be, Ralph is bound to
be acquitted. Still, I'm your man, Mr. Tracy, and as you suggest that I might
pick up some clue from local gossip I'll be off to-morrow, and report
progress as soon as I make any."

He spoke heartily, and Mr. Tracy shook his outstretched hand, well
content with the result of his call.

"It's an ill wind that blows no one any good," he thought as he

descended in the lift. "If one result of this magisterial blunder is to make
those two fine young fellows better friends, it won't have been all wasted;
and as for the trial I don't suppose there will really be any miscarriage of
justice."

Sir Geoffrey had appointed Mr. Tracy executor of his will, and the old
fellow travelled to Fairbridge every evening, and dined and slept at the
Manor House. He found the arrangement a very pleasant one in many ways,
and incidentally it enabled him to do Gwendolen good by employing her as
his secretary in dealing with the mass of business involved in the settlement
of so considerable an estate, and thus distracting her thoughts from her
terrible anxiety for at least a portion of the twenty-four hours. He felt
confident that he would sooner or later come across some documents
relating to the mysterious marriage, and he carefully perused all the letters
which Sir Geoffrey had preserved. There was, however, no trace of any
correspondence between the husband and wife. It was, of course, possible
that they had not been apart after their marriage until the final separation
came, but still it was singular that among so many letters as Sir Geoffrey
had kept there should be none from this particular person—not even letters
written during the period of courtship.

It was in this direction that Mr. Tracy had turned Gwendolen's especial
attention, desiring her, also, to look carefully among a rather large
assortment of photographs and miniatures for anything that might
conceivably be a portrait of Lady Holt. He was anxious to trace the
whereabouts of the widow for reasons quite apart from his obligation to
carry out Sir Geoffrey's testamentary instructions in every particular.

Questions would certainly be asked about her at Ralph's trial, and his
professional pride was piqued at his present entire ignorance of the story.

After leaving Melville's chambers he went back to his office in

Lincoln's Inn Fields, and issued another advertisement to the Press, offering
a substantial reward to anyone who would give him information as to the
whereabouts of Lady Holt.

"It is only her business to apply to me for her own advantage," he

reflected; "it is anybody's business to tell me where she is if it's made worth
their while," and convinced that the money spent on this advertisement
might prove to have been well spent, he went down to Fairbridge in an
equable frame of mind.

He was surprised when Gwendolen told him she had seen Melville that
afternoon.
 "I wonder why he did not mention it," he said, but although his training
inclined him to be suspicious, his suspicions on this occasion were easily
dispelled, especially as his impressions of Melville's good disposition
towards his brother tallied with those formed by the two ladies.

"I consider that he behaved in a very gentlemanly and straightforward

fashion," he said, and Mrs. Austen cordially agreed. "He was diffident as to
his power to help, but directly I suggested something I thought he might do,
he undertook it with alacrity. That is quite the proper spirit."

And privately, to his own mind, he admitted that Melville could not
explain to Mrs. Austen how his financial position would have hampered his
activities, but for that little cheque on account of out-of-pocket expenditure,
and he was filled with admiration of Melville's delicacy and tact as well. He
had no doubt but what Melville Ashley was a deeply-injured man, and
resolved to interpret Ralph's instructions liberally, and pay in another
hundred pounds to Melville's account at the bank.

Later in the evening, Gwendolen came to him in the library and laid
some photographs in front of him.

"I found these in an old bureau," she said. "Do you think one of them
might be Lady Holt?"

Mr. Tracy looked at them eagerly; two of them he laid aside, but the
third he kept in his hands.

"Those two I am pretty sure I recognise; they are old photographs, but
the faces are familiar to me, though I cannot put names to them at the
moment. This one is different. Taken at Norwich, I see. If the photographer
is still there we may ascertain whose likeness it is. I will make enquiries at
once, and hope something may come of it. Thank you, my dear. This may
be exceedingly useful," and after examining it earnestly, as if to impress the
picture on his memory, he put it carefully away with the other papers
relating to Sir Geoffrey's last will and testament.
 CHAPTER XXI.

THE RESULT OF THE TRIAL.

If fate was playing a joke upon Ralph Ashley, her humour erred upon
the side of grimness. His friends met with no success in their endeavours to
find some other possible culprit, and, on the other hand, a succession of
small incidents occurred, all of which seemed to lead him on inevitably a
little nearer to the gallows. Of these, the most important was the finding of
a revolver in the gun-room at the Manor House and a quantity of bullets
similar to that which had penetrated Sir Geoffrey's heart. At the trial this
seemed to be the most conclusive point in the case for the Crown. There
was no indication that it had been recently used, but the same remark
applied to all the weapons in the little armoury, all of them being kept in
perfect condition. The explanation of its existence was given frankly by
Ralph and corroborated by Melville; it was one of two given years before
by Sir Geoffrey to his nephews, but to which of the two it properly
belonged neither of the brothers could declare; both averred they had not
used them for a very long time, and the damning fact remained that the
other pistol was missing. It had been thrown away, the prosecution
suggested, after the tragedy, and that all the ammunition had not also been
destroyed was due to that oversight of which every criminal is capable, and
but for which many more murderers would escape conviction.

Ralph was haggard and pulled down by confinement and by want of

sleep; if he were a criminal, he was, at any rate, no actor, and his obvious
nervousness was interpreted by many as symptomatic of a guilty
conscience. He listened attentively to the entire proceedings with visibly
increasing consternation and dismay, and it was not until Melville took up
his position in the witness-box that any gleam of hope appeared upon his
face.

Melville once more engrossed the sympathy of a court; he was so

distressed upon his brother's account, so anxious to testify to his integrity of
character, so ready, and yet so concise, in his replies, that he made an ideal
witness.

"Ralph was always my uncle's favourite," he said again, with a rather

pathetic smile; "they were just like father and son." No, he had never heard
of any difference of opinion between them, and was convinced they had
never had any quarrel. It was impossible, he protested, that Ralph could or
would have committed such a crime. His generous indignation warmed
Ralph's heart, and was subsequently commented on with approbation by
counsel for the Crown in his concluding address to the jury, although, as
that great lawyer pointed out, it did not affect the issue. What was more
important was the admission he was rather skilfully beguiled into making
that on one occasion he had known his brother to be embarrassed by want
of money. An apparently trivial question had been put as to his knowledge
of Ralph's financial position, and Melville answered it candidly; both of
them were absolutely dependent on Sir Geoffrey's bounty, both received a
liberal allowance, and on one occasion Sir Geoffrey had paid a considerable
sum in which Melville himself was indebted. Presumably, therefore, he
would have done the same for Ralph, to whom he was, by common consent,
more attached.

"In short, you are not aware that your brother has ever been in want of
ready money?"

Melville hesitated, coloured, and was lost. Reluctantly, and only as the
result of a long series of skilfully worded questions, he let out the fact that
Ralph had once applied to him for an immediate loan of a hundred pounds.
He was at Monte Carlo at the time, and Ralph wrote from Fairbridge. Yes,
he supposed that Ralph might have applied to Sir Geoffrey, but it did not
follow that he had done so and been refused. The inference was
unwarrantable, he declared warmly, but his protest failed to have effect, and
the harm was done. In reply to a few further questions, he accounted
moodily for his own time on the day of the murder. He had gone out for a
walk after a late breakfast, and in the afternoon had remained at home,
owing to the storm. The telegram announcing his uncle's death was not
brought to him at once, as his valet was off duty. The manager of the
chambers brought it up with some letters when, on waking up from a doze,
Melville rang for tea. He was obviously downcast by the information
previously extracted from him, and when he finally left the box, it was felt
that he had slipped the noose around his brother's neck.

Of the rest of the proceedings Melville had no knowledge at first hand.

His nerves, strong and finely tempered as they were, could not stand the
tension, and he hurried to the hotel, where he had engaged a private room.
There he paced up and down like a caged beast, unable to think coherently,
and only waiting with horrible anxiety for the verdict. In the still silence of
the court, Gwendolen sat motionless, her whole attitude a prayer, and
downstairs Ralph waited, glad to escape the observation of the hundreds of
curious eyes. But to neither of them, to whom the verdict meant so much,
did the time seem so appallingly long as it seemed to Melville, nor was their
anguish any thing like his.

Three hours dragged by, each one composed of sixty minutes of agony,
and then the waiter brought a note to him. He tore it open, afraid to read its
contents, yet unable to endure another second of suspense. The jury had
been unable to agree, and the case was sent back to be tried again.

Melville groaned. So it all had to be gone through again, all the

examination and cross-examination and re-examination, all the hypocrisy
and ingenuity and deceit, and at the end perhaps another murder, or perhaps
suicide; for Ralph's conviction would be equivalent to the one, and his
acquittal might be procurable only by the revelation of the truth, which
would involve the other. Melville had honestly expected his brother's
acquittal, had been quite sincere in his words of encouragement to
Gwendolen; and now there was this miserable, ineffectual conclusion to the
solemn farce.

White lipped, wide eyed, with furrows scored across his brow, he turned
to the waiter and forced a smile.

"Well, that's the end of it to-day. Order a fly to take me to the station. I'll
go up by the next train," and writing a note to Mr. Tracy to say he could be
got at at once in Jermyn Street if required, he presently returned to town.
 In the cells below the court Mr. Tracy found a very different man
awaiting him from the one he had last seen in the dock. The intolerant
indignation with which Ralph had listened to the various suggestions of the
prosecution, and the scorn with which he had heard the address to the jury,
with its denunciation of his supposed ingratitude and treachery, were all
gone. He was pale and exhausted by the long day in the crowded court, but
he was also dignified and self-possessed. He turned to the solicitor with a
whimsical smile.

"I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Since some of the

twelve good men and true were not convinced of my innocence, I suppose I
ought to be grateful that things are not worse than they are. Did I behave
myself better to-day?"

"Much better," Mr. Tracy answered. "You know," he added seriously,

"the circumstantial evidence was very strong, and although, as I have
maintained all along, the probabilities are always against a miscarriage of
justice, you are not out of the wood yet. Mr. Ashley, if the jury had
convicted you we should only have had a matter of three weeks in which to
discover new facts. I think you ought to be grateful that we have three
months."

"That is true," said Ralph soberly. "But what a three months for me! Is
there no chance of bail?"

Mr. Tracy shook his head.

"No. You must go through with it, but a great deal may happen in three
months, and it won't be for want of trying if I don't get you out long before
then. Now, Mr. Ashley, I have two questions to ask you. First, do you know
who this is?"

Ralph looked at the photograph which Mr. Tracy showed him.

"To the best of my knowledge I've never seen this before, and I'm
certain I don't know the original. Who is it?"
 "I have an idea it is Lady Holt," Mr. Tracy answered, "but I dare say I
shall find out soon. It is curious how everything seems to be in a conspiracy
against you. The man who took that photograph retired from business a few
years ago and is now dead. I hoped I might find out the name of the lady
from him, but he's dead and the books can't be traced. Now the next point.
The hundred pounds you asked your brother to lend you; what about that?"

Ralph's brows contracted.

"I asked him for it," he said curtly. "That's true enough; but I didn't get
it."

"That don't matter," Mr. Tracy retorted. "The fact that you asked for it
did you a lot of harm to-day."

"I don't see why Melville should have referred to it at all."

"Perhaps he couldn't help himself," the solicitor said. "Some of those

fellows are marvellous at making you say more than you mean to say. Why
did you ask him for it?"

"Because I was a silly ass," Ralph answered viciously, "and didn't like
to ask Sir Geoffrey. I never did ask him for a sovereign in my life; goodness
knows he gave me enough without that. Do you remember selling out some
railway stock for me a little time ago?"

"Yes," said Mr. Tracy, "and advising you not to do it, but you would not
listen."

"That was the time," Ralph said. "I had bought a yacht for Gwen and
didn't want to give it to her not paid for, and you were slower than usual,
and I was cleaned out, and only just engaged. And I asked Melville to lend
me a hundred till you settled up. Of course, Sir Geoffrey would have given
it to me if I had asked him, but he would have insisted on its being a gift,
not a loan, and I wanted the boat to be my present to Gwen, not his."

"Well, I'll see that some of that comes out next time," said Mr. Tracy. "I
could see that it made a very bad impression to-day."
 "There's a continuation to the story," said Ralph, with a hard look in his
eyes, "and since Melville has chosen to reopen it, I don't see why I should
not tell you the rest. He did not answer my letter, did not send me the
money."

"Well?" said Mr. Tracy.

"He came back from Monte Carlo broke to the world and fetched up at
Fairbridge. I happened to go away that night and just missed him, but he
saw Sir Geoffrey and asked for some money. Sir Geoffrey said he wouldn't
give him another sixpence, and asked what he had done with two hundred
and fifty pounds he'd had six weeks before. I'm blest if Melville didn't
produce my letter and say he'd lent me a hundred of it."

"Oh!" said Mr. Tracy; "and what happened then?"

"The dear old chap begged his pardon and paid him the hundred pounds
for me. If ever there was a rank swindle that was one. When I came home
next day he began to pitch into me for asking Melville instead of him for
help, and, of course, the whole thing came out at once."

"Yes," said Mr. Tracy. "What did Sir Geoffrey say?"

"He said rather a lot," Ralph answered grimly. "He was going to instruct
you to take proceedings against Melville for getting money under false
pretences, but I persuaded him to let me repay him the hundred pounds and
take the matter up myself. He agreed—rather reluctantly—and that was the
end of the matter, except that I had a bit of a rumpus with Melville, who
owes me the money to this day."

Mr. Tracy was much more interested than he allowed Ralph to perceive;
the story let in a flood of light upon much that he had not been able to
understand.

"Then your brother is extravagant, I suppose?"

"Money runs through his fingers like water through a sieve," Ralph
answered. "Just six weeks before that Sir Geoffrey wiped off all his debts,
as he admitted to-day; he gave him two hundred and fifty pounds, and told
him to go to the deuce; Melville blew the lot at Monte Carlo, came home,
got that extra hundred out of Sir Geoffrey, and went away. And the very
next day he turned up again at Fairbridge, had a long session with the old
chap, and got round him so far that he stayed a week at the Manor House
and began to tap him again, just as casually as ever. I couldn't understand it
then, and I can't now. Sir Geoffrey never talked about him after we had that
palaver about my supposed debt, but I am quite clear it was because of that
swindle that Melville got himself disinherited. Sir Geoffrey didn't like his
gambling, but he liked the other thing less—and I don't wonder."

"Why didn't you tell me something about this on the day of the funeral,"
Mr. Tracy asked, "when I read the will?"

"Oh, well," said Ralph, "I'm a slow-witted chap, you know, and you
were in a hurry; and, besides, it's not a pretty story. I wouldn't have
mentioned it now, only Melville brought it up so unnecessarily. You had
better know the rights of it since you think what he said did me harm to-
day."

For the time being, Ralph forgot the position in which he actually stood,
and turned as if to accompany Mr. Tracy to the door when he rose to leave,
but the sight of the warders, who had retired to the far end of the room, re-
awakened him to the fact that he was a prisoner, and he flushed as he put
out his hand.

"I'm awfully grateful, sir, for all you have done and are doing for me. If
you succeed and clear my name, I may be able to show my gratitude
practically."

"When I succeed, you mean," Mr. Tracy corrected him smilingly. "I
must say good-bye now, but next time I come I hope I shall have good news
for you. Don't brood over your grievance, Mr. Ashley. That may seem a
counsel of perfection, but try to act up to it, if only for the sake of that
charming young lady who is waiting for you. Faith in God and a clear
conscience can make even prison tolerable, and nobody can rob you of
those."
 He put his bag down upon the table while he shook both Ralph's hands
violently. Then he blew his nose with equal violence, seized his bag, and
hurried away, scolding himself inwardly for being so upset by so
commonplace an incident as an interview with a client. Not until he was in
the railway carriage and on his way to town did he recover his usual
equanimity. With his characteristic stare of mild surprise he surveyed the
bag which reposed on the seat opposite to him, but the only remark which
escaped his lips was when at length he removed his eyes from it, as if he
had ascertained what was in it by some mental adaptation of the X ray
process. His remark was brief and pregnant: "Well, I'm hanged."

CHAPTER XXII.

MR. TRACY BECOMES ACTIVE.

Melville's faculty of reading character did not err when it satisfied him
that he might rely upon Lavender Sinclair keeping faithfully any secret
which she had passed her word not to betray. There are plenty of women of
whom the same might be said, all the gibes of all the cynics
notwithstanding. But it also told him that he might be ill-advised in leaving
her too much alone, especially just now, when the papers were so full of the
trial and of speculations as to her own existence and whereabouts. The
morning after the abortive trial, therefore, he determined to pay her an early
visit, and donning a new suit of mourning, and an expression suited to the
part he was being compelled to play in the Fairbridge tragedy, he walked
out of his chambers as soon as he had finished his customary "brunch."

Thus it happened that he was not at home when a few minutes after his
departure Mr. Tracy, who capriciously elected to walk upstairs without
enquiring of the commissionaire whether Mr. Ashley was within, or
troubling the lift attendant to convey him to the top floor, knocked at the
outer door of his self-contained suite of apartments. Jervis opened the door.
 "Mr. Ashley has only just gone out," he said, "and he gave me no
instructions as to when he would return."

Mr. Tracy was visibly distressed; he was also elderly, and rather out of
breath from scaling so many stairs.

"It is of the first importance that I should see him to-day. You have no
idea where he has gone—whether I might find him at his club, for
instance?"

Jervis could not say. Mr. Ashley was a member of several clubs, but it
was scarcely likely that he would visit any of them so early in the day.
Could not the gentleman leave a card and call again?

The gentleman would much prefer to wait on the chance of Mr. Ashley's
returning, but Jervis seemed so disconcerted by the suggestion, and so much
at a loss for a civil way of getting rid of the visitor, that Mr. Tracy took pity
on him.

"In point of fact," he said, "I am Mr. Ashley's family solicitor, and you
may have heard of the melancholy affair at Fairbridge Manor. I must see
Mr. Ashley immediately, in order to prepare for the new trial that is now
necessary."

No servant could fail to recognise the paramount importance of such a

visitor, or take the responsibility of sending him away without explicit
orders to that effect, and Jervis admitted Mr. Tracy. He did more, influenced
perhaps by the transference of two new coins, a sovereign and a shilling
from the lawyer's pocket to his own.

"I come of an old-fashioned school," Mr. Tracy said with a smile, "and
must insist upon your accepting the shilling as well. There's a sentimental
difference as well as a pecuniary one between a pound and a guinea, and I
never cease to regret that guineas are coined no more. No thanks, I beg. I
am really excessively obliged to you for allowing me to come in and await
Mr. Ashley's return."
 So Mr. Tracy gained his point, and Jervis never suspected that for more
than half an hour he had been waiting in the tailor's shop opposite, watching
for Melville to emerge before climbing the steep staircase to the little
bachelor flat.

"Mr. Ashley always takes a very late breakfast," Jervis remarked as he

proceeded with his work of clearing the table. "May I get you some
luncheon, sir? I am sure it would be Mr. Ashley's wish that I should ask
you."

"'Pon my word now, that's very obliging of you," Mr. Tracy answered;
"very obliging indeed. I always breakfast very early myself, and I am
distinctly hungry. If I shall not be causing anybody any inconvenience I
should be uncommonly glad of some luncheon."

So Jervis relaid the table, and after several colloquies with the chef,
conducted through the medium of the speaking tube outside, produced a
meal which did great credit to the establishment, and which Mr. Tracy, to
use his own language, found "vastly appetising." And while he gave proof
of his appreciation of this vicarious hospitality by satisfying an appetite
which would have been creditable to a young fellow of twenty, he
entertained the valet with a chatty, circumstantial account of the famous
murder trial, in which he knew he must be interested. Men of the old
school, to which Mr. Tracy prided himself on belonging, are not prone to
hold such animated conversations with other people's servants as Mr. Tracy
held with Melville's valet now. Jervis was probably unaware of this, but, in
all the circumstances, it is not surprising that he should be completely
satisfied of the visitor's good faith, and chat as freely as the visitor did
himself; which was precisely according to Mr. Tracy's anticipations, and
was the sole reason of his going there at all.

"I daresay Mr. Ashley is very much upset by the suspicion attaching to
his brother," Mr. Tracy said, as he attacked a second kidney.

"I don't doubt he is," Jervis replied, "but he's not the sort of gentleman
to show it."
 "Not given to showing his feelings, you mean," said the lawyer; "his
uncle, Sir Geoffrey Holt, was just like that. But it doesn't follow that those
very self-possessed people feel things less than the others do. You don't
agree with me, eh?" for Jervis looked doubtful.

"I don't think Mr. Ashley minds things as much as I should if I were in
his place," the valet answered; "that is to say, not some things."

"Little things, perhaps," Mr. Tracy suggested.

"Well, not what I should call little things," said Jervis, who was by no
means disinclined to criticise one of his gentlemen, as he termed the several
tenants of the chambers whom he had the privilege of valeting. "For
instance, if his breakfast don't please him, or his boots don't shine enough,
you'd think the house was on fire by the way he rings the bell, but in what I
should call vexations he doesn't even begin to seem worried, when I should
be off my head with scheming and devising."

Mr. Tracy laughed.

"To have the power of not being worried by worries must be a great
blessing sometimes, but the word has such different meanings for different
people. A man like Mr. Ashley, with comfortable quarters and first-class
attendance, and well-to-do people belonging to him, can't have real
anxieties."

"I don't know about all that," Jervis said sententiously. "Nobody can see
very far into anybody else's life. What I should be rich on, Mr. Ashley may
be poor on, but I've known lots of times when he's been in difficulties, so to
speak, and never turned a hair. Those are poached eggs on spinach, sir."

"Thanks, I'll take some," said Mr. Tracy, who would have gone on
eating until dinner-time if only so he could have prolonged the
conversation; "but what do you mean by difficulties?"

Jervis laughed a little in his turn.

 "Of course, all this is quite between ourselves? It would never do if Mr.
Ashley knew I'd remarked upon it, but people can't help seeing what goes
on under their noses if they're not blind, and gentlemen's gentlemen see
more than other people, to say nothing of their having to do with it in a
manner of speaking. Well, there was one time I remember particularly,
because it seemed so funny—the sort of thing nobody but Mr. Ashley
would have thought of, yet it came quite natural-like to him. It was last time
he came home from Monte Carlo, where he'd been making money for the
bank. I don't believe he had a penny piece to call his own, and he was going
out in the evening. 'Jervis,' he says, 'put out my dress clothes early; I'm
dining out to-night.' So I went to do it, but couldn't find any shirts in his
portmanteau. When he went away I'd sent all his linen to the laundry, and
they wouldn't send it back without he paid the bill, which was a pretty long
one. 'Have you any shirts, sir?' I asked, and he took me up, vexed-like.
'How the devil am I to know?' he says; 'find some.' Course I had to tell him
about the laundry, and he colours up and says he'll be hanged if he writes
them a cheque."

"How did you manage?" Mr. Tracy enquired.

"I didn't manage at all," Jervis announced; "that's what I'm telling you.
It worried me at the time, although it wasn't me who was going out, but Mr.
Ashley takes it all as a matter of course. 'Go over to the Burlington Arcade,'
he says, like a lord, 'and tell my hosiers to send over three dozen and put
them down to my account.'"

"Did they do it?" Mr. Tracy asked.

"Do it?" said Jervis scornfully; "of course they did it. Seems to me
people will do anything in this world if you only bluff them enough. Still,
there's a case to show what I mean. I should never have thought of getting
three dozen shirts on credit because I couldn't pay my laundry bill, but to
Mr. Ashley it was the natural thing to do."

Mr. Tracy was really amused, but he thought it a most illuminating

anecdote, and followed up the vein it opened.
 "So Mr. Ashley plays at Monte Carlo, does he? Well, one wants a long
purse for that game. Does he entertain much here? He very well might
where things are so well done."

Jervis appreciated the compliment.

"Only a very occasional supper," he answered. "I'm sure I'm sorry he

doesn't have company oftener." Jervis's regret may, perhaps, have been due
to financial considerations, but he hastened to admit that Mr. Ashley's
failure to receive his friends in Jermyn Street made the work lighter for his
attendants. "Of course, it makes the place an easier one for me," he said,
"and I will say that, although there are times when for weeks together he
doesn't know where to lay his hand on a shilling, Mr. Ashley is very
considerate and very free with his money when he's got any. Often and
often he's thrown me over a couple of sovereigns and said I might find them
useful if I knew anybody who would like to go up to Hampton Court or
have an afternoon at Kempton—which I do."

He became anecdotal, and Mr. Tracy found it a not very easy matter to
get him back to the subject of Melville's habits without making his purpose
too apparent, but he did it at last.

"No," said Jervis, in reply to some indirect question, "Mr. Ashley hardly
ever has ladies here. There was two called the other day, and one came to
tea once."

"The two were the Austens, I expect," said Mr. Tracy. "Miss Austen is
engaged to be married to Mr. Ashley's brother."

"Is she?" said Jervis, with interest; "poor young lady! Do you think Mr.
Ashley—our Mr. Ashley, I mean—is going to marry the other lady? She's
the only one I've ever known come here alone."

"I don't know, I'm sure," Mr. Tracy answered. "I don't even know who
she was."

"Her name was Sinclair," Jervis said. "She was a lady, anyone could see,
and beautifully dressed. She must know him very well, because I heard her
call him Melville. It was the very day before the murder at Fairbridge that
she called and took tea with Mr. Ashley."

"The day before, or the day it happened?" Mr. Tracy asked.

"The day before," said Jervis. "The day of the murder Mr. Ashley didn't
go out. I know that because he happened to say he would be going out and
he wouldn't want me. So I went to Hendon, but when I got back Mr. Ashley
had been telegraphed for, and the manager told me he was in a terrible way
because he had stopped at home after all, owing to the storm, and the
telegram wasn't brought up to him at once."

With all this, and much more, did Jervis entertain Mr. Tracy, in whom,
as Mr. Ashley's family solicitor, he felt he might place entire confidence. He
removed the luncheon, set the room in order, and attended to his various
duties in Melville's bedroom, brushing his dress clothes and laying them out
in preparation for the evening, but still Melville did not return. When the
clock upon the mantelpiece chimed half-past three Mr. Tracy began to show
signs that even his patience was becoming exhausted.

"I am afraid that after all I shall have to give it up," he said, with evident
reluctance. "If you will still further oblige me with writing materials, I will
leave a note for Mr. Ashley, asking him to give me an early appointment."

Jervis produced the necessary tools, and Mr. Tracy wrote the little note.

"I have told him how attentive you have been," he said to the valet, "and
perhaps you will allow me——"

Another guinea changed hands, and Jervis was profuse in his

expressions of gratitude; none the less he seemed a shade uneasy.

"Of course, anything that I have said," he began, but Mr. Tracy cut him
short.

"Absolutely between ourselves, I assure you; ab-so-lutely between

ourselves," and, with a sagacious nod of the head, the old fellow began to
take his departure. At the door he hesitated a moment, for a card tray caught
his eye. "Some of these young men are terrible sticklers for etiquette," he
said, scrutinising it closely; "perhaps I ought to add my card to these," and
while fumbling in his pocket for his card-case he contrived to get a glimpse
of Mrs. Sinclair's card, which Jervis had brought up the day before the
tragedy. He had not time to see the number of the house, but The Vale,
South Kensington, was quite enough for his immediate needs, and as he
turned into Piccadilly Circus he gave utterance to a little sound, half grunt,
half chuckle, expressive of the utmost satisfaction.

"It's cost me two guineas and a wholly unnecessary suit of clothes, but I
shall be very much astonished if it doesn't prove a good investment. Still, if
it doesn't, the estate can bear it. 'Pon my word, if my name weren't Tracy, I
should think it must be Slater!"

Well pleased with himself, he climbed on to the top of a Putney

omnibus, and employed the time occupied in the journey to South
Kensington Station in arranging his mental notes. He had already heard
enough to verify the impression gleaned from Ralph that Melville was an
inveterate gambler, and that was quite enough to explain Sir Geoffrey's
hitherto incomprehensible action in disinheriting his younger nephew.

"It only shows how even an experienced old lawyer like myself can be
taken in by a plausible young rascal," he thought with much humility. "I
dare say he is a waster, who tired Sir Geoffrey out. It will be interesting to
try to ascertain presently how much he did have out of the old man in the
last year or two. Three hundred and fifty pounds in six weeks isn't bad to
begin with, and I don't think there can be any doubt of his having had that."

Assuming Ralph's story to be accurate in every particular, there yet

remained one point which puzzled Mr. Tracy. If Sir Geoffrey had resented
Melville's fraud in the matter of the alleged loan to his brother so hotly as to
be within an ace of prosecuting him for getting money under false
pretences, why had he relented so suddenly and given unquestioning
hospitality to an extravagant gambler and swindler whom, even prior to the
last fraud, he had formally discarded and renounced? What was the method
which Melville's ingenuity had devised to overcome Sir Geoffrey's
expressed determination? At present, Mr. Tracy could not conjecture, but
already he knew enough to make him want to know more, and in
journeying, as he was now doing, to see what manner of place The Vale,
South Kensington, might be, he was acting on reason rather than impulse,
albeit the reason was hard to define precisely.

At the station he descended from the omnibus and walked into the
Fulham Road, finding it necessary to ask more than once where The Vale
was to be found; it is, indeed, not an easy spot to discover, although the
ground occupied by the several houses and their gardens is so considerable.
Just as he had lighted upon the archway forming the entrance to the place,
an empty carriage emerged, and Mr. Tracy asked the coachman if he knew
which was Mrs. Sinclair's house.

"Number five," the man replied. "I was to have driven her out to-day,
but she's ill and can't go."

"Are you her coachman?"

"Oh, no," the man said. "Mrs. Sinclair doesn't keep a carriage, but hires
pretty often from our place."

"Thank you," said Mr. Tracy; "perhaps I had better postpone my visit to
another day," and, noting with admiration the shady lawns and bright
gardens lurking so unexpectedly in this busy part of the town, he turned
again into the street, after making sure that he could find the place again
without difficulty. A dairy on the other side of the road, looking delightfully
clean and cool with its green and white tiles, polished marble counters, and
gleaming milk cans, invited him, and sitting down at a little table he ordered
a large glass of milk and soda, and drew the girl behind the counter into a
gossipy conversation.

"Yes, it's a sweetly pretty place," she said, referring to The Vale, "and
nice people live there; carriage people mostly. We serve them all."

"Do you know Mrs. Sinclair?" Mr. Tracy asked. "I was calling upon her
to-day, but am told she isn't well."

"I'm sorry," said the girl. "Oh, yes, I know her very well. She is so nice
and civil-spoken, and always so beautifully dressed. Don't you think she's