The house was very old, and showed no signs of any improvement having been made for at least half a century. The furniture was of little value and there were but few other things. A rusty sword, a few old books, and some odd trinkets comprised about all. As Miss Crabshaw did not care for these they were given to a negro woman who had rendered some assistance to Old Nancy in the last years of her life.
The house itself contained none of those mysterious passages or hidden closets which the imagination so readily connects with such old habitations. There was a kind of small locker, however, opening from a large closet near the ceiling. This little recess contained nothing but a package of old papers and worthless letters, faded and mouldy. On looking them over, one in particular attracted my attention on account of an official seal which it bore. It proved to be a document commissioning Richard Anthony Treadwell as Major in the Seventh Regiment of Cavalry in the Royal Army of his Majesty King George III. The date was June 12, 1793. But who was Richard Anthony Treadwell, and how happened his commission to be here? A discovery made a few minutes later served to throw some light on the mystery. Among the few books found in the house was an antique volume of Shakspere's plays, which, judging from the thick net-work of cobwebs encircling it, had not been touched for years.
Curiosity led me to open the book. On its fly-leaf was the inscription: "A present to Thomas from his father, Richard A. Treadwell." A curious fact was that this name had been crossed and recrossed with a pen, and underneath had been written as a substitute in the same handwriting: "John Blake." The ink used at the first writing had retained its blackness in a remarkable degree; while that used at the time of the erasure and for the substitute name had so faded that the first name was much plainer than the second. The natural inference, then, was that the father of Nancy Blake and the great-great-grandfather of Cecilia Crabshaw had, at some time, changed his name from that of Richard Anthony Treadwell to that of John Blake. Why he should have done so was an unexplained problem, and whether it was my duty to inform Miss Crabshaw of the fact or not was not quite evident to me. What I really did, however, was to put the old document in my pocket and forget it.
The place was soon after sold for a few hundred dollars, and after attending to my affairs in the locality I returned to Boston, but not to remain.
A leading lawyer in Washington, an old and esteemed friend of my father, and a former adviser of mine in the matter of studying law, had offered to admit me to partnership in a lucrative practice which had become too large for his advancing years. I accepted, and bade good-by to dear old Boston.
III.
It was not until May, 1881, that I returned to my former home, and then for a short time only.
The next day after my arrival I had a caller at my hotel, and to my surprise and pleasure it proved to be my old acquaintance and friend, Christopher Gault.
"I saw your name in the list of arrivals in the morning paper, and came up at once. I am delighted to find you here. I was in hopes to have met you on my return from England, but learned that you had left 'The Hub' entirely."
"Yes, I have been gone a year and a half. But tell me, Gault, where have you kept yourself all of this time? I had nearly lost all trace of you. You made your departure from this continent so suddenly, nearly two years ago, that I thought you must have been"—