"By the great eternal, it is never! I swear it!" he said, as his arm dropped beside him and the paper fell to the floor.
There was a sound below of people entering the house. They had come, and he heard Eloise's voice as she passed his door on her way to her room with Amy. Was Jack there too? he was wondering—when Jack came in, gay and breezy, but startled when he met the woe-begone face turned toward him.
"By George! old man," he said, "Peter told me you were shut up with a cold, but I didn't expect this. Why, you look like a ghost, and are sweating like a butcher, and no wonder. The thermometer must be a hundred. What's the matter?"
"Jack," Howard said, "for forty-eight hours I have had a hand-to-hand tussle with the devil. He was here bodily, as much as you are, but I beat him, and swore I wouldn't burn the paper. Read it!"
He pointed to it upon the floor at his feet.
"I had it pretty near the fire twice, and singed it some," he continued, as Jack took it up, and, glancing at the first words, exclaimed, "A will! You found one, then?"
"Not a regularly attested will, but answers every purpose," Howard replied, while Jack read on with lightning rapidity, understanding much that was dark before, and guessing in part what it was to Howard to have all his hopes swept away.
"By Jove!" he said, as he finished reading, "there was good in the old man after all. I didn't think so when I heard Jakey's story, and saw where his wife lived and died. We found the marriage certificate."
"You did!" Howard exclaimed, a great gladness that he had not destroyed the paper taking possession of him. "Why didn't you write and tell me? It would have saved me that fight with the devil."
"I don't know why I didn't," Jack replied. "I was awfully busy, and went at once to Palatka to see if Tom Hardy left any family there, and found he was never married. Then I went to Atlanta to find some trace of the Browns and the Hardy plantation. The latter had been sold, the Hardys were all gone, and the Browns, too,—killed in the war, most likely, except one who is a street-car conductor in Boston, and I am going to hunt him up, as I believe he was at the wedding, although he must have been quite young. Yes, I ought to have written, and I'm sorry for you, upon my soul. You look as if you'd had a taste of the infernal regions. I'm glad you didn't burn it."