One evening I called at Mrs. Kale's to see my two old ladies of the bundles and also Mrs. Kale, for whom I had conceived a high regard on account of her kindness to the former as well as to myself, and in the course of my visit Miss Pansy gave me, for not the first time, an account of the way in which they had been reduced from what they thought affluence to what she very truly called "straitened circumstances." I confess that I was rather bored by her relation, which was given with much circumlocution until she mentioned casually that Miss Leigh had tried to interest her father in their case, but he had said it was too late to do anything. The mention of her name instantly made me alert. If she was interested, I was interested also. I began to ask questions, and soon had their whole story as well as she could give it. "Why, it may or may not be too late," I said. "It is certainly very long ago, and the chances of being able to do anything now are very remote; but if there was a fraud, and it could be proved, it would not be too late--or, at least, might not be." "Oh! Do you think that you could recover anything for us? Mr. McSheen said nothing could be gotten out of it, and we paid him--a great deal," she sighed, "--everything we had in the world, almost." "I do not say that, but if there was a fraud, and it could be proved, it might not be too late." The name of McSheen had given me a suspicion that all might not be straight. Nothing could be if he was connected with it. I recalled what Wolffert had told me of McSheen's selling out. Moreover, her story had unconsciously been a moving one. They had evidently been hardly used and, I believed, defrauded. So, when she pressed me, and promised if she were ever able to do so she "would reward me generously," as if, poor soul, she could ever reward any one save with her prayers, I undertook to look into the matter for them, and I began next day. I will not go into the steps I took to reach my ends, nor the difficulties I encountered, which grew as I progressed in my investigation until they appeared almost insurmountable; but finally I struck a lead which at last led me to a conviction that if I could but secure the evidence I could establish such a case of fraud for my two old clients as would give promise of a fair chance to recover for them, at least, a part of their patrimony. The difficulty, or one of them--for they were innumerable--was that to establish their case it was necessary to prove that several men who had stood high in the public esteem, had been guilty of such disregard of the rights of those to whom they stood in the relation of trustees that it would be held a fraud. I was satisfied that had McSheen taken proper steps to secure his clients' rights, he might have succeeded and further, that he had been bought off, but the difficulty was to prove it. However, I determined to make the effort to get the proof and my zeal was suddenly quickened.