“I have prepared her body, even as you had told me yours was to be prepared. I inclose her fair form in a golden coffin, as a fitting receptacle for one so true and noble. With immortelles for her death, should she die, I surround the casket; with orange blossoms at her head, in the hope of future life and of her marriage to you, I lay her to rest.
“In an iron box at the foot of her coffin you will find my last testament, and the dowry I bequeath my daughter. I have prepared everything for this moment. That you might know this place, I put the letter into the copper cylinder; I bored through the walls of your tomb, and pushed in the case; and when I heard it fall on the floor of your sepulchre, I sealed up the hole. I knew if you lived again you would rescue your Marie. I felt, that if you died, it was better that she died also.
“The time has come! I lay this letter upon the snowy bosom of her who loved you as never woman loved a man. O God! can mortal know the anguish that seizes my heart as I am about to seal the lid which closes her sweet face in a living tomb!
“When these words are read by thee, O my daughter, if ever thine eyes shall brighten again in life, my bones will lie bare and naked at the foot of thy coffin. Good-bye, my darling daughter. I close the lid! I seal thy fate!
“Jean Colchis.”
Without allowing the sadness of the moment to weigh upon their feelings, the President stepped to the door, and soon returned, followed by a servant bearing the little iron box which Dr. Town had carried on his saddle from Guadulupe Island, and which Mollie had surrendered to her father.
Soon it had been opened, and its contents exposed to view. A bundle of papers was on top, and these the President took out and gave to Cobb.
He took them, and opened the first paper: it was the will of Jean Colchis, giving to Junius Cobb, on the day of his marriage to Marie Colchis, all money due from the government of the United States on the contract of sale of the invention of the sympathetic telegraph. The second paper examined was the original contract for the transfer of this invention to the government in consideration of $5,000,000 paid down and a perpetuity of one-half of one per cent, on the gross earnings derived from its use.
“Why!” exclaimed the President, as Cobb read the contract, “you will be one of the richest men in the country. As near as I remember, there are over a hundred millions of dollars lying unclaimed in the Treasury on this contract.”
