“Perhaps I should drop it into the embers?”
“It is hard to say. I should hate to know from it anything that would make me think less of poor Hugh.”
“But it may be quite different. Ought I to open it? My father gave all the papers to me to examine. I wonder if I should open it, cousin?”
Miss Betsey took the letter in her hand and looked at it for a minute or two.
“It looks like a message from the dead,” said she.
“Open it, cousin. You remember him and his trouble better than I can. Open it, and if there is nothing in it that his friends would be glad to know, you shall burn it without a word.”
Betsey still hesitated.
“It comes from the dead,” said she, but she opened it at last, cutting round the large seal with a pair of scissors. But their hesitation as to what they ought to do was not over. There was an inclosure addressed to David Fleming, at which Betsey looked as doubtfully as ever, and then she gave it to Elizabeth. There were only a few words in the first letter:
“Honoured Sir:—I write to confess the sin I sinned against you, though you must know it already. I ask your forgiveness, and I send this money as the first payment of what I owe you, and if I live, full restitution shall be made. If my father will read a letter of mine, will you take the trouble to give him the lines I send with this?”
And then was signed the name of Hugh Fleming. It was only a hint of the sad story they knew something of before. There was an American bank bill for a small sum, and the inclosure to his father, and that was all.