When Mrs. Parlin was sufficiently calm, Trafford set himself to the task of extracting the details of the affair; letting her at first tell it in her own way, and later asking questions that completed the story. Condensed to the facts, it ran as follows: Nearly twelve years before, her husband, in the course of some investigation of a land title in the Public Lands Office, came across what appeared an error in an important entry. He was on the point of calling attention to it, so that it could be corrected, when a critical examination convinced him that it was not a mere error, but a carefully made change that involved the title to timber-land that was just becoming exceedingly valuable. Acting on the hint thus given, he went to work cautiously, but determinately, and personally got together a number of documents that revealed what seemed a systematic series of forgeries, relating to immense tracts of land that were formerly public. In some cases, the title to the land itself was involved; in others, that to the stumpage only. It was impossible to carry on these investigations without attracting attention, especially when they had gone so far as to show that in every case where the title was suspicious, the benefit accrued to the Matthewsons and to the Hunters at Millbank. Mr. Matthewson was then Governor, but he had formerly been at the head of the Public Lands Office, and his financial prosperity had appeared to date from about the time he held that position. A prying reporter got an inkling that something was going on, and in pursuing his enquiry revealed the hints he had discovered to Henry Matthewson. A position of financial importance was suddenly offered the reporter in a Western city and the story never was printed. But the Matthewsons were, from that moment, on their guard. A few months later, a fire broke out in the record room of the Public Lands Office and valuable records were destroyed. This did not attract especial attention, for the press had repeatedly called public attention to the existence of this very danger, and merely contented itself with shouting “I told you so,” with a great deal of strenuousness. What was not known, save to Judge Parlin and, probably, some of the office force, was the extreme discrimination shown by the fire in destroying the very books on which proof of the forgeries depended. Certain remarks incautiously dropped by Judge Parlin let out facts from which the scandal took shape, with charges freely made by political opponents of the Matthewsons, which could now be proved only by papers in Judge Parlin’s hands, since the destruction of the original books. This was the Range 16 Scandal in its original form.