Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/823

WHITINUl V. WELLINGTON. 811 �Savings Bank to secure his note for $1,800, on demand, with inter- est. The debt bas not been paid, and therefore the condition of the mortgage bas been broken. In Jannary, 1879, Nathan P. Pratt, the treasurer of the said savings bank, executed an assignment of the mortgage in the name of the bank, and in due form, and indorsed the note to one Kimball, who paid bim the full amount of the note, with interest. As part of the same transaction Kimball bought cer- tain other notes and mortgages, amounting to some five or six thousand dollars. Kimball was aeting for the Appleton National Bank, and gave Pratt a receipt, signed by him as president of said national bank, in which he agreed to return and reassign the notes and mort- gages upon repayment of the amount paid and interest within six months. The assignments were to Kimball personally. �The Appleton bank has taken no action conceming any of these mortgages. Kimball himself paid that bank the fall amount of money advanced for them, and afterwards assigned the note and mortgage of Wellington to the plaintiff, for value, March 25, 1879. �March 19, 1879, the Eeading Savings Bank failed and stopped payment, and its aiiairs are now in the hands of receivers appointed by the supreme court of Massachusetts. It was discovered about this time that Pratt had fraudulently disposed of nearly all the assets of the savings bank, and had concealed his fraud by leaving on the iiles forged duplicates of the mortgages, and other evidences of debt and title so disposed of. This mortgage was a part of those assets, and Pratt converted to his own use the money which Kimball had paid for it. Ail this was nnknown to the trustees of the bank. �Before and at the time of executing the assignment to Kimball, Pratt was the secretary of said savings bank, and the officer who kept and had charge of its records, and the records of its board of trustees, and in order to prove his authority in the premises he delivered to Kimball a copy of a vote of the trustees as follows : �"At a meeting of the trustees o£ the Eeading Savings Bank, held May 3, 1876, upon motion of G. P. Judrl, one of the trustees, wted, that the treasurer be authorized to discharge, assign, and release all mortgages belonging to the bank. A true copy. Attest: Nathan P. Pratt, Secretary." �It is agreed, if competent to be proved against the demandant's objection, that although the certificate was a true copy of the record, the vote, as passed, did not contain the word "assign," but the record had been skilfully altered by Pratt, or with his knowledge, at some time before the assignment to Kimball; and the forgery had not ��� �