From these meditations a gust of wind aroused him. He shivered and turned. In a corner were a few pieces of wood, and with some stray papers in his pocket he determined to make a fire. But the task was not easy; a mass of ashes that for years had rested undisturbed filled the stove. In endeavoring to remove them, he struck a hard object, which, on examination, proved to be a key, curiously formed, long and narrow, that he could have sworn he had seen before. But where? In that anterior existence, perhaps, from which certain recollections come; and he was about to put it aside and continue his work, when abruptly, from the very core of memory, a picture floated—his mother standing at a table locking and unlocking a certain box. That box, he remembered, always stood on a shelf in her room; and at last, the ashes removed, he groped up the creaking stair to see if the box might be there still. The match he held went out. He lighted another and opened the door. On the shelf the box stood covered with immemorial dust. He raised it; it was so light he was sure there was nothing in it. Nevertheless he took it back to the kitchen and inserted and turned the key. Within, a letter lay, discolored and yellow. By the uncertain flicker of the fire, Hugh read from it as follows:
Tucson, Arizona, .
Madam—Although I am a stranger to you, I believe it to be my duty to place you in possession of certain information which otherwise you might never obtain.
Nine years ago it was reported that your husband, Humphery Hyrtl, was lost at sea. That report was false. When the ship which he commanded sank, I was with him. Of all on board he and I alone escaped. We were picked up by a passing vessel and taken to South America. On the boat he declared that he was my brother, and, on reaching Rio, caused it to be recorded at the United States Consulate that Humphery Hyrtl and his ship were lost. It did not take me long to discover that he had left in Virginia a wife and child, to whom, for reasons of his own, he did not wish to return. I became so indignant at his conduct that he finally promised to go back to you as soon as he had made enough to live on. Since then we have worked together, sometimes lucky, often the reverse. Today our partnership is dissolved. His share amounts to ninety thousand dollars, and with it he should return to you; but, as he has told me to address his letters to Boston, I presume that it is his intention to dissipate the money which should rightfully go to your support and that of your son.”
I inform you of these facts in order that you may take such steps as seem advisable. He is to leave here tomorrow, and after making a short stop in St. Louis and in Chicago, should be in your neighborhood sometime during the first or second week of the coming month. If he does not appear, you will, by making inquiries concerning him, under his assumed name of Humphery Anderson, surely find him in Boston.
When Hugh had read the letter, for the first time he understood the cause of his mother’s death. The knowledge that the man whom she had loved and mourned was not only alive, but preferred life under an assumed name to life with her, had broken her heart. Truly, he reflected, it was sufficient: the cup was full. And as he mused over the terrible tidings that the letter contained, he saw at once that it was his father who had been killed in the collision, that the money which had been entrusted to Sisseton was the money to which the letter referred; the remarkable chain of circumstances which had permitted John Anderson to represent himself as the brother of the deceased were clear to him and the unaccountable excitement which the little man had manifested when the name of Hyrtl was pronounced easily understood.
“The money was mine,” muttered Hugh. “He knew it, and, by heavens, I will make him disgorge!”
He passed out through the empty hall to the road beyond.
“Ah, Jenny,” he cried, to the stars, “let me but find you now and you shall be rich, indeed!”
VII
A day or two later, when Hugh awoke in his room in Tompkins Square it was with that sense of satisfaction which comes to a man who has done his duty. He had left orders in Richmond that a suitable monument be placed on his mother’s grave, and he had contracted to have the cottage refurnished and rebuilt, for it was there the coming honeymoon was to be passed.
The party essential to the proper passing of that honeymoon was indeed intangible and remote, but what difficulties shall impede a lover armed with courage and mailed in hope? He had absolutely nothing at all to do but to unearth John Anderson, and that accomplished, to find Jenny, and behold!—happiness, lifelong and uninterruptable, would crouch, a spaniel, at his feet.
The unearthing of such a person as John Anderson seemed to Hugh the easiest thing in the world. In the Stock Exchange and its purlieus an individual of such marked peculiarities must by this time have become well known. With Jenny it was different; but though that ruffian of a father of hers had hid her in the depths of a Japanese jungle or immured her behind convent walls, he would find and recover her yet. She should be his; she had promised it, and what shall separate those that love?
These anticipations were interrupted by a rap
