Hugh goes in Search

Who does not remember the first exciting news of the great Grant
v. Grant will case? The leading Q.C.'s. watched eagerly for briefs;
juniors who held even the smallest briefs in connection with it
patronised their fellows, and explained to them intricate legal
dodges which they themselves had thought out and "pumped into" their
learned leaders. "Took me a doose of a time to get him to see it,
but I think he has got it at last," they used to say. The case
looked like lasting for years, for there would be appeals and
counter-appeals, references, inquiries and what not; and in getting
ready for the first fight the lawyers on each side worked like
beavers.

Blake let it be known among the clans that he was going to fight
the case for Peggy, and that there was going to be a lawsuit such
as the most veteran campaigner of them all had never even dimly
imagined--a lawsuit with the happiness of a beautiful woman and
the disposal of a vast fortune at stake. Word was carried from
selection to selection, across trackless mountain-passes, and over
dangerous river crossings, until even Larry, the outermost Donohoe,
heard the news in his rocky fastness, miscalled a grazing lease,
away in the gullies under the shadows of Black Andrew mountain. By
some mysterious means it even reached Briney Doyle, who was camped
out near the foothills of Kosciusko, running wild horses into
trap-yards. This occupation had taken such hold on him that he
had become as wild as the horses he pursued, and it was popularly
supposed that the other Doyles had to go out with horses to run
him in whenever they wanted him.