Unlocking the Chest.
Page 263.
"Let us see what else there is in the chest," said the lieutenant. "We may find something that will give us further light on the subject."
I placed the miniature on the table, and returned to the chest. Mr. Jackson took from it an old time-stained newspaper. He threw it upon the floor, as a matter of no consequence; but I picked it up, for I remembered what I had heard Matt say about a newspaper. But it contained only a brief paragraph, and alluded to another and fuller account of the calamity contained in a previous issue.
There was nothing else in the chest that related to me, but I felt that I had enough. Mr. Jackson said that, if I ever went to St. Louis, I could find a file of the newspaper of which we had a single copy, and could find the number containing the names of the saved and the lost at the burning of the Farringford. The portrait would enable me to identify my mother, if she were still living, and also to establish my own identity.
"Here is Matt Rockwood's money," said the lieutenant, as he took from the bottom of the chest several shot-bags.
"I have some money to add to it," I answered, taking from the store-room the amount I had received for wood since the death of my foster-father.
"The old man did a good business here, I should say," added Mr. Jackson, as he held up the bags in order to estimate their weight.
"We had better count the gold."
Counting the money seemed to have a greater fascination to my friend the officer than to me. He placed the coins upon the table in piles of one hundred dollars each. When he had nearly finished, I counted eight of them. There was not enough, even with the silver, to make another, and the whole amount was eight hundred and ninety-one dollars.