“Are there any letters for me, sir,—Henry Middleton?”
I glanced my eyes at the applicant: there was something in his voice, look, and manner which for a moment riveted my attention. He appeared by no means annoyed at my scrutiny of his person, no doubt ascribing it to the nature of our situation. He was apparently about twenty-three years of age; eyes dark and penetrating; a shade of melancholy passed over his countenance and withered the sunshine of hope; a mouth of the most marked character conveyed to the observer a knowledge of his; the lower lip firmly compressed, and the curl of the upper denoted strong and agitated feeling, and an irritable temperament. Having gathered this much from Henry Middleton’s personal appearance, I took out from the box M a handful of letters. One was addressed to him: the handwriting was evidently that of a female. He seized it with a nervous grasp, a momentary gleam of hope lighted up his shadowy countenance, and he rushed out of the office. For the first time in my life I felt a degree of curiosity to know the contents of another’s letter: it was a strange and to me a new feeling. In vain I battled with the demon which seemed rising within me; in vain I turned over letter after letter to withdraw my mind from this dangerous focus of thought: it was utterly useless. That night I dreamed of being condemned for breaking open letters intrusted to my charge.
Towards evening on the day following, to my extreme joy Henry Middleton stood at the window.
“I wish to pay the postage of this letter, sir.”
Twenty-five cents I informed him was the charge. The letter was in my hand: Middleton had departed. The address, Miss Amelia Templeton,—a small seal with the impression M upon it,—was the padlock to my curiosity. My brain grew giddy with the intensity of desire. I held the epistle up to the light,—the paper was coarse and thick. I peeped into the folds: ah! what is that?—part of a sentence visible:—
“Love, Amelia, acknowledges no tie but that of its own creation.”
What a sentence! In vain I tried to follow it up; not a word beyond this could I make out. Here I was left in the dark: then my imagination completed a volume of surmises. He, Middleton, was endeavoring to persuade Amelia to elope with him, or rather to follow him here, and the above line constituted a portion of the argument used by him to effect this object.
Such were my conjectures relating to the affair, derived from such evidence as the reader is now acquainted with.
A month passed over, and my note-book contained several incidents of an interesting nature; but the lovers, as I concluded them to be, occupied so much of my thoughts that I could pay but very little attention to the rest. I awaited impatiently the return of the mail which should bring the answer from Amelia. At length it came. To Henry Middleton. I instinctively caught it up. I felt as if I were an interested person, and had a right to see—that is, without breaking the seal—as much of the letter as I could; but Amelia had folded it so carefully that it defied all attempts to gather any connected sentence. Gracious heavens! what do I see? By turning up a portion of the inner fold with the blade of my knife, I read,—
Yours, affectionately,