STRIKE'S CASE. 59

the insolvent laws, and he, Strike, had been appointed the trustee
of Rogers; that Rogers, during two years after the date of those
deeds, continued to receive the rents, and to pay the ground-rents
and taxes of those lots; that Strike, since the execution of the
deeds, has often promised Rogers to reconvey the lots on the repay-
ment of the money paid by him; and that, in October 1812, the
defendant, Rogers, applied to Baltimore County Court for the benefit
of the insolvent laws, on which occasion the parties procured the
defendant, Strike, to be named as his trustee, the better to conceal
those fraudulent assignments.

Upon which the bill prays, that those deeds of assignment may
be declared null and void; that the lots may be sold for the benefit
of the creditors of Rogers, and of Henderson & Rogers; that
Strike may be compelled to account for the rents and profits of the
lots from the date of the deeds; and that the plaintiffs may have a
subpoena against Rogers and Strike to answer, &c. But there is
no prayer for general relief.

This bill propounds as an interrogatory to be answered by the
defendants, " whether, at the period of executing the said convey-
ances, the said Henderson & Rogers had not actually stopped
payment as a commercial house; and whether certain property of
theirs had not been seized by certain persons alleging themselves
creditors?" But it is not alleged, that Robert Henderson, the part-
ner of Rogers, was dead or insolvent; nor is it distinctly averred,
that the partnership is actually insolvent; nor is Henderson made
a party to this suit.

The defendant, Nicholas Strike, on the 29th of November 1817,
put in his answer to this bill, in which he says, that he knows
nothing of any debt being due from Henderson & Rogers to the
plaintiffs; that the deeds of assignment were made by Rogers to
him bonafide; the full consideration money, as set forth in them,
having been paid by him to Rogers; and they were not executed
to him to cover any loan of money due by Henderson & Rogers,
or either of them; nor were those lots conveyed Ib him in trust, or
by way of mortgage or security, or to evade the claims of the cre-
ditors of Henderson f& Rogers, or of either of them; that Hender-
son & Rogers, or either of them, were not indebted to him previous
to the execution of those deeds; that he purchased those lots
absolutely, for his own use, and paid for them out of his own
moneys; that after he made the purchase, he improved one of them,
by erecting additional buildings thereon, at his own expense, for