proved.” The case of Bank v. Comfort, decided by the supreme court of Dakota territory, reported in 28 N. W. Rep. 855, is in point. It is quite true that this case, as claimed by plaintiffs’ counsel, is not precisely like the case at bar in its facts. The two cases, are, however, quite similar in their general features, and in certain aspects are identical. In both cases the creditors were seeking to collect a claim from a merchant in embarrassed circumstances; and to make such collection, among other things done, a bill of sale was executed and delivered to the creditors, purporting to convey to the creditors an absolute title of all the goods, etc., in the store. In both cases, there was a secret agreement, resting in parol, which differed radically from the terms of the bill of sale, and whereby the creditors held the goods only in trust, to be converted into money, which money was to be turned over to the debtor after deducting therefrom the amount of the creditors’ claim. It is with reference to this conflict between the unwritten and the written terms of the transaction that the court say: “Any secret reservation in trust for the grantor, not apparent on the face of the papers, but resting wholly in parol, renders the entire transaction void, as against creditors injured thereby.”
Plaintiffs’ counsel argue that the rights of the plaintiffs to the property in question as between plaintiffs and the attaching creditors, must be ascertained and determined, not by the terms of the bill of sale, but entirely by the terms of the secret agreement resting in parol. Counsel insists that, under the parol agreement, plaintiffs, with respect to the property in suit, occupied either the position of mortgagees of chattels in possession or that of pledgees. Answering this argument, it will suffice to say that we do not find a scintilla of testimony in this record tending to show that the plaintiffs and Lee ever agreed to place the plaintiffs in the position of either mortgagees or pledgees of the goods. On the contrary, the evidence tends to show that, as between Lee and the plaintiffs, the latter held the goods neither as pledgees nor as mortgagees, but as trustees. The law will not allow plaintiffs to shift their legal position to escape the consequences of their own voluntary acts. The bill of sale, in connection with the secret trust arrangement, consti-
