Not until 'Lisha was unloading the steaming and ill-smelling mass did the box in question excite his curiosity; then dropping it to the grass, he finished his task and swept out his wagon before waiting to examine the trunk.
The lock had been broken and rusted away, the strap also had disintegrated, so that all that held it together was a loop of wire. Jerking the top up disclosed a mass of smoking rags and a few bundles of scorched papers. The smell of the burned hide with which it was still partly covered nearly choked 'Lisha as he stooped to finger the contents. He was about to gather the things together and give the trunk a mighty toss into the swamp, when a bundle of yellow papers, swelled by the dampness and heat, squirmed and fell apart, leaving a long envelope, in fairly good condition, lying face upward. It was merely the sudden movement of the papers that drew the man's eye toward them, but he quickly went nearer for a second look, then seized upon the letter with hands that shook so that the characters danced about like will-o'-the-wisps before him. Yes, the address was plain enough, a well-known name, written in a delicate, pointed hand; the sight of it made his heart beat like a nervous woman's. Turning the letter, he saw that the large seal on it had never been broken.
Carefully wiping it on his coat, 'Lisha put it in his pocket and began to stir the other papers, but very carefully, for the heat and moisture made it very easy for a careless motion to turn the bundles into pulp. "To whomsoever's hands these papers may fall," was written across the wrapper of the most considerable package, while even as 'Lisha read it moisture altered the writing so that its identity vanished in a blurred streak. Quickly realizing that unless the papers were carefully dried and separated their purport would be lost, he tipped the water from the trunk and closed the lid, saying apparently to Toby the near horse, after the fashion of a woodsman who talks to his animals:—
"There's suthin queer about this trunk, but as I be the hands the papers have fallen into, I reckon I'll look into them."
Then, as an impetus akin to an electric spark touched the mists of conjecture that were gathering in his roomy if not systematically ordered brain, he jumped fairly off the ground, shouting:—
"Great snakes! suppos'n' these here have something to do with the lady baby! Maybe the box was meant to come along with her; those rags there look as if they was once baby clothes. But how did them villains that left her get her switched off from her goods, and why ain't the letter 'dressed to Oliver Gilbert instead of to—My Lord! but this here's a dilemma with three horns, not the two-horned, ornery kind.
"If I take 'em to Satiry, she'll be so fussed up she'll worry 'em to bits before read; if Oliver Gilbert or Poppy gets 'em and I'm on the wrong track, as I've nothing yet but instinct to prove that I ain't, it'll pull her heart out with disappointment or maybe give him a stroke, for strokes comes frequent to folks turned of seventy. If a thing's so red-hot you can't handle it, there's folks that by nature's meant to do it for you, and them's the doctor, the lawyer, and the parson. I reckon in this case the parson's the best, 'cause if the Lord has let down a bit of his wisdom, discretion, and loving-kindness in a sheet by four corners in this neighborhood, it's fell on Stephen Latimer.
"I'll just clip over there by the back way and leave the box and home again before a soul's awake to spy and whisper; hey, Toby 'n Bill?"
And the horses, accustomed to respond to his cheerful address and being keen for breakfast, replied by a doubly shrill whinny.
It was past six o'clock when 'Lisha drove into the yard of the Rectory. Latimer had but then returned from the cottage colony at the Mills, where he had given courage to a young mother on the road of shadows that seemed doubly lonely in that she would leave her new-born son behind.