company, and we think that they are substantial and important. The motion to dismiss is therefore overruled, and we proceed to the discussion of the merits of the questions.

1. The first question is whether a Circuit Court of the United States had exclusive jurisdiction of the issues determined by the Ohio court in the case at bar. Before beginning the discussion of that question it is necessary to state the facts out of which it arises. The Toledo, Wabash and Western Railway Company, whose property was incumbered, as we have seen, by mortgages of the Toledo and Wabash, for $5,900,000, and by the claim of lien of the equipment bonds, and by other mortgages upon the property of other corporations which entered into the consolidation, itself executed two mortgages upon all its property. By the foreclosure of one of these mortgages the property became vested in the Wabash Railroad Company. This company, after executing a mortgage on its property, consolidated with another railway company, creating the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway Company. This company executed in 1880, a mortgagé on its property to the Central Trust Company of New York and James Cheney for $50,000,000. On May 27, 1884, the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway Company, having fallen into financial difficulties, filed a bill in the Federal courts in six States, alleging its insolvency and asking the appointment of receivers. Thereupon receivers were appointed, qualified and took possession of the property. Thereafter the Central Trust Company and Cheney began proceedings in several state courts for the foreclosure of their mortgage of $50,000,000. These proceedings were removed to the Federal courts, and upon them a sale, under the direction of those courts, was made in 1886 to a purchasing committee. Before this sale, however, on October 17, 1884, the Circuit Court of the United States for the Western Division of the Northern District of Ohio dismissed the bills for receivership and for the foreclosure of the Cheney mortgage as to all parties who claimed liens prior to that mortgage. After the sale upon the foreclosure of the Cheney mortgage,

proceedings for foreclosure of several other mortgages prior to it were begun in the Circuit Courts of the United States, consolidated, and resulted in decrees for foreclosure and sale under all the mortgages. These decrees were entered in the various Circuit Courts on March 23, 1889. In the meantime the property. remained in the possession of the Circuit Courts through its receivers. The sale under these decrees was made to a purchasing committee, by whom it was conveyed to a new corporation, the Wabash Railroad Company, the plaintiff in error. By order of the Circuit Court for the Northern District of Ohio, made on June 18, 1889, possession of the property was delivered by the receiver to the purchasing committee, and he was discharged. Since August, 1889, the plaintiff in error, the Wabash Railroad Company, has been in possession of the property under the terms of the decrees of March 23, which presently will be stated. None of the defendants in error were parties to the proceedings in the Circuit Courts of the United States, and an attempt to remove this case from the Ohio courts to the Circuit Court of the United States, resisted by the defendants in error, failed. Joy v. Adelbert College, 146 U.S. 355.

It appears from this statement that the railroad property affected by this controversy was in the actual possession, through receivers, of Circuit Courts of the United States from the date of the appointment of receivers, May 27, 1884, to the date of their discharge and the delivery of the property to the purchasing committee, which was ordered on June 18, 1889, and was accomplished about July 1, 1889. It cannot be and apparently is not disputed that, during that period, the property was in the possession of the Circuit Courts of the United States, and that that possession carried with it the exclusive jurisdiction to determine all judicial questions concerning the property. But it is earnestly contended that, when the property passed out of the actual possession of the United States courts, in conformity with their decrees, into the hands of the purchasers under the decrees, the exclusive

jurisdiction of the United States courts came, to an end. The applicability of this contention to the case at bar will appear upon a fuller statement of the origin and progress of the case at bar in the courts of Ohio. The suit was begun on April 28, 1883, by Adelbert College alone, which was the owner of two of the equipment bonds, each of the par value of $500, and prayed for the decree, which, with some variations, not material to be stated, was finally given. Nothing of moment, beyond the service of process and the filing of pleadings, occurred until 1889, when several other holders of the equipment bonds joined in the suit as co-plaintiffs, by filing, with leave of court, what is denominated an answer and cross petition, in which they prayed relief similar to that sought by the original plaintiff. This petition was verified on January 2, 1889, but the date of its filing does not appear in the record. Later other similar cross petitions were filed by leave of court. Pleadings continued to be filed from time to time by the different parties to the suit, the last appearing in the record being one verified March 9, 1896, thirteen years after the beginning of the suit and seven years after the discharge of the receiver by the Federal court. The cause was then heard by the Court of Common Pleas and judgment was rendered for the bondholders in July, 1897, which, after affirmance by an intermediate court, was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the State. It appears, therefore, that the trial and judgment in the state courts were long after the Federal courts had transferred the railroad property to the purchasers under the decrees for foreclosure, and had discharged the receiver. Since the Federal courts had parted with the physical possession of the property, they obviously could no longer exercise an exclusive jurisdiction respecting it, unless there was something in the decrees under which the property was sold and conveyed, which preserved to the courts the control of the property for the purpose of giving full effect to its judgments. We are brought then to the consideration of the terms of those decrees. Upon their proper interpretation and true effect our

decision must rest. For correct understanding of the decrees, and especially of the reservations contained in them, it is necessary to ascertain the progress and present status of still another litigation. James Compton, an owner of some of the equipment bonds, in a suit brought upon them in the Ohio courts in 1880, obtained a decree by the judgment of the Supreme Court of the State, ascertaining the amount due him in respect of the bonds and accrued interest, declaring that he was entitled to an equitable lien on the property owned by the Toledo and Wabash Railway Company at the time of the consolidation of 1865, subject to the mortgages upon that property then existing, and ordering, in default of payment of the sum found due, a sale of that part of the property which was within the State of Ohio. Compton v. Railway Company, 45 Ohio St. 592. The entry of judgment on the mandate of the Supreme Court was made in the Court of Common Pleas in October, 1888. Thereupon the Circuit Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Western Division, made Compton a party to the consolidated foreclosure suit, and ordered him to appear and plead, answer or demur. Compton appeared specially and set up his Ohio judgment. Various proceedings have been had with respect to his claim, including a judgment in this court in May, 1897, Compton v. Jesup, 167 U. S. 1, affirming Compton's lien and right to a sale in satisfaction of it. After the decision of this court, Compton's claim was sent to a master, who, after some ten years, made a report, which is now pending on exceptions in the Circuit Court. At the time of the decrees of foreclosure of March, 1889, the questions concerning Compton's claim were, of course, undecided, and account of them had to be taken in these decrees.

The decree of March 23, 1889, is very elaborate. The parts of it material here may be stated with comparative brevity. It ordered the foreclosure of all the mortgages upon the railroad property in the possession of the court, and the sale of the property, and the disposition of the proceeds among those adjudged to be rightfully entitled to it. After reciting that

the property is in the possession of the court through its re ceiver, the decree directs that, in default of payment within ten days of mortgage bonds and their coupons, scrip certificates, funded debt bonds and their coupons, amounting altogether to some fourteen millions of dollars, the property should be sold at public auction to the highest bidder. It was ordered that the separate divisions should first be offered for sale separately, that afterward the whole property should be offered for sale as a unit, and that the method of sale which resulted in the better price should stand. The special masters appointed to conduct the sale were directed, on confirmation of the sale and payment of the purchase price, to execute a deed or deeds which "shall vest in the grantee or grantees all the right, title, estate, interest, property and equity of redemption, except as hereby reserved, of, in and to" the property in fee simple. The decree then proceeds to define what is "hereby reserved." The part of the decree which expresses the reservation is so vital in the determination of the case that it is printed in full in the margin.1 In ascertaining its true

1 All other questions arising under the pleadings or proceedings herein not hereby disposed of or determined are hereby reserved for future adjudication; including the claim for unearned interest on bonds not yet due.

And the defendant James Compton having in open court on the final hearing herein objected to the rendering or entry of any decree in this cause at this time on the ground that the issues raised by the amendment to the complainants' amended and supplemental ancillary bill and to the crossbill of the cross-complainants Solon Humphreys and Daniel A. Lindley, trustees, and the answers of the defendant James Compton to be filed herein have not been tried and determined, the court overrules such objection and the defe dant James Compton duly excepts to such ruling and the entry of this decree. But it is adjudged and decreed in the premises that the rendering and entry of this decree in advance of the trial and determination of such issues is upon and subject to the following conditions, to wit:

If upon the determination of such issues it shall be adjudged by this court that the decree rendered by the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio in the suit brought by said James Compton against the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway Company and others, referred to in the pleadings herein, and the lien thereby declared and adjudicated in his favor continue in full force and effect, then the purchaser or purchasers at any sale or sales had hereunder of that portion of the property sold, covered and affected by the VOL. CCVIII-4