“In that tall box,” pointing to the desk.
“There is no money there, Archie,” said Mrs. Merryman. “We have looked for it several times.”
“Archie can find it; he saw the woman put it there. Archie was looking through a crack in the shutter. The woman didn’t know Archie saw her,” he added earnestly.
“Show us where it is, Archie,” said Hilda; “take your own time.”
He stepped to the desk, put up the lid, lowered it again, and stood contemplating it with a look of perplexity upon his worn face.
“Archie forgets. He must think,” he said. He locked and unlocked the desk several times, the ladies sitting quietly by.
“Yes, Archie knows!” he cried exultantly. “The woman held the lid so, and put her hand under here,” and suiting the action to the word, he drew forth a small flat package and gave it into the hand of Hilda. It was addressed to her. She opened it and found Mrs. Ashley’s letter, the money, a letter from Jerusha Flint to her and the gold pen with its holder set with rubies.
Pale and silent, Hilda held them, her eyes brimming with tears. It seemed almost as if her aunt had returned to hold converse with her, and that poor Jerusha was yet craving forgiveness, though “after life’s fitful fever,” she was at rest in the grave.
“Hilda,” ran the letter, “I was cruel to you, and can never atone for that, but I give back all I kept from you. I did not intend to keep the pen, but forgot to send it with the trunks, and then, wishing to have no communication with you, put off sending it. I have used it twice, there being no other pen in the house. The first time was in writing my letter to Mrs. Merryman to keep you. You did not return, and I looked upon the pen as bringing me good luck. Diana told me that she used it in writing to Mrs. Warfield; you found a home with her, which I regarded as better luck, for it took you out of my sight. I directed an envelope to my brother Horace with it, enclosing three letters. One was my mother’s letter to me, received on my sixteenth birthday. The other two I requested Horace to forward to our grandfather after I am gone, and I wish him joy in reading my mother’s letter to him from Baltimore, and his reply. I also enclosed for Horace a slip cut from a London newspaper years and years ago, by my grandmother, which confirmed the record of our ancestry and heredity given in my mother’s letter to me.
“That letter from my mother served to keep in remembrance my miserable childhood. Her pride of ancestry kept her from allowing me to associate with the plebeian children of the neighbors, among whom our poverty-stricken homes were compelled to be, and to add to my half-starved, and in winter, half-frozen condition, I was shut up with her sighs and tears, her heart-sick waiting for forgiveness and help from her father which never came, and her unavailing regret for her disobedience to him and to her mother, which was the cause of all her troubles.