"You would cut off the telegraph wires. Try it. I am so persuaded that I
am right, that I will pay half the expense if you will allow me to
direct the operations."

"Nay, I am well able to afford the cost; for the rest, allow me to write
to you."

About ten days afterwards I received a letter from Mr. J----, telling me
that he had visited the house since I had seen him; that he had found
the two letters I had described replaced in the drawer from which I had
taken them; that he had read them with misgivings like my own; that he
had instituted a cautious inquiry about the woman to whom I rightly
conjectured they had been written. It seemed that thirty-six years ago
(a year before the date of the letters) she had married, against the
wish of her relations, an American of very suspicious character, in
fact, he was generally believed to have been a pirate. She herself was
the daughter of very respectable tradespeople, and had served in the
capacity of nursery governess before her marriage. She had a brother, a
widower, who was considered wealthy, and who had one child of about six
years old. A month after the marriage, the body of this brother was
found in the Thames, near London Bridge; there seemed some marks of
violence about his throat, but they were not deemed sufficient to
warrant the inquest in any other verdict than that of "found drowned."

The American and his wife took charge of the little boy, the deceased
brother having by his will left his sister the guardian of his only
child--and in the event of the child's death, the sister inherited. The
child died about six months afterwards--it was supposed to have been
neglected and ill-treated. The neighbors deposed to have heard it shriek
at night. The surgeon who had examined it after death said that it was