Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/247

 DOOGLAS V. BUTLER, 235 �on a tax sale for taxes assessed against one Elizabeth Thomas. Bat the evidence olearly shows that the former owner redeemed the lot some years before the complainaint became the purchaser, and that the fraudulent claim of the defendant bas been made possible by the fact that Butler bas become the administrator of the estate of Elizabeth Thomas, and as such bas and keeps control of the papers, which prove that the lot was duly redeemed. �The tenders, then, being in time, were they legal in form and sufficient in amount? I do not inquire into the tenders which the testimony shows were made in the presence of the two brothers, James and Tobias Johnson, — the first, of $350, in the month of February, 1873, and the second, of $600, on the sixth of October, 1874, — because the proof cannot be broader than the allegations of the bill, and I am not able to find anything in the bill, in regard to tenders at tbose dates, definite enough to put the defendant upon bis defence. But the eomplainant charges that on the fifth of May, 1873, she and her husband and one George Greeley found the defendant in the city of Camden, and then and there counted out to him $350, and requested him to take from that sum enough to re-imburse himself for the money he had paid for taxes and assessments on the real estate of the eomplainant, which he then held by tax title, and that the defendant declined the offer, assigning, as bis only reason, that the sum was not enough; and that on the thirty-first of October, 1874, she again tendered to him $500, by the hands of her authorized agents, C. V. Bergen and George W. Humphries, which was also rejected. Both of these tenders are proved by the par- ties who are stated to have witnessed or participated in them. Not only were the tenders legal, but the amounts were amply sufficient for any sums due when they were respectively made. It requires no very serions analysisof the dates of the purchases and payments, as claimed by the defendant in bis answer, to prove this. Less than $200 were due him in May, 1873, when he refused $350 as insufficient; and if the $500 ten- dered in October, 1874, should be applied to lawful pur- chases and payments after May 5, 1873, such sum was ��� �