Nothing there but ashes.
Nothing to pay for the life that had been given. Nothing to bring to the helpless young girl the knowledge without which she was cut off from all family relation, or connection with the life from which she came. Nothing to help her to establish her identity, or enable her to claim the property, the deeds of which had been so sardonically left in the box.
The utter maliciousness of it, the cold, cruel, calculating vindictiveness of the deed left them stunned.
"Don't grieve so, darling," Hannah Peniman murmured, stroking the golden head and pressing it to her breast, "you have the deeds, and they mean a great deal. Property in those two big cities must be worth a great deal of money now."
"But I don't want money," sobbed Nina broken-heartedly. "I don't care anything about the deeds, he might as well have burned them, too. What do I want of property in New York or St. Louis? I'll probably never go there. I don't want to go there. I want to stay here with you. But what I wanted—what I hoped we would find in the box—were pictures of Papa and Mama, letters from them—things about them and me—so that I would know something about them—about myself, so that I wouldn't feel myself a poor forsaken, friendless waif, dependent upon your charity for all I have and am."
Joshua Peniman crossed the room and laid his hand upon her head.
"You are not a friendless waif, Princess," he said in his low, gentle voice, "you are our daughter, beloved, cherished, as much as Sara or Ruth." Then taking up the deeds from the table he examined them carefully.
"This is very strange," he mused; "I can't understand it. Why should he have left the deeds and destroyed everything else in the box? There is a considerable quantity of ashes here. The box must have been full of papers. Why should that villain have destroyed them all and left these deeds? I cannot understand it."
He puzzled over it long after Nina had sobbed herself to sleep in Ruth's loving arms.
Where was Red Snake?