“And this brings me to a relation of my present interest in this house,” she continued. “When we escaped from California a large lot of very valuable Mexican laces which belonged exclusively to my father was hidden in the wall. The sale of a former lot of smuggled goods had resulted in a large profit and Cristoval had received a bank draft for the amount, one half of which was due my father. When we last saw Cristoval at San Bernardino, before we left for New York, he promised my father to cash the draft and send him the proceeds. This he never did, although he advanced my father, at that time, a sum of money from other sources to pay our expenses until we could establish ourselves in the east.