Bricks Without Straw Part 44

"Not much--nothing except what he told me in his last days. He used to talk about them a great deal then, but there was something that seemed to grieve and trouble him so much that I always did all I could to draw his mind away from the subject. Especially was this the case after the boys, your uncles, died. They led rough lives, and it hurt him terribly."

"Do you know whether he ever corresponded with any of our relatives at the North?"

"I think not. I am sure he did not after I was grown. He often spoke of it, but I am afraid there was some family trouble or disagreement which kept him from doing so. I remember in his last years he used frequently to speak of a cousin to whom he seemed to have been very much attached. He had the same name as father, who used to call him 'Red Jim.'"

"Was he then alive?"

"I suppose so--at least when father last heard from him. I think he lived in Ma.s.sachusetts. Let me see, what was the name of the town. I don't remember," after a pause.

"Was it Marblehead?" asked the son, with some eagerness.

"That's it, dear--Marblehead. How funny that you should strike upon the very name?"

"You think he never wrote?"

"Oh, I am sure not. He mourned about it, every now and then, to the very last."

"Was my grandfather a bachelor when he came here?"

"Of course, and quite an old bachelor, too. I think he was about thirty when he married your grandmother in 1794."

"She was a Lomax--Margaret Lomax, I believe?'

"Yes; that's how we come to be akin to all the Lomax connection."

"Just so. You are sure he had never married before?"

"Sure? Why, yes, certainly. How could he? Why, Hesden, what _do_ you mean? Why do you ask all these questions? You do not--you cannot--Oh, Hesden!" she exclaimed, leaning forward and trembling with apprehension.

"Be calm, mother. I am not asking these questions without good cause," he answered, very gravely.

After a moment, when she had recovered herself a little, he continued, holding toward her a slip of paper, as he asked:

"Did you ever see that signature before?"

His mother took the paper, and, having wiped her gla.s.ses, adjusted them carefully and glanced at the paper. As she did so a cry burst from her lips, and she said,

"Oh, Hesden, Hesden, where did you get it? Oh, dear! oh, dear!"

"Why, mother, what is it?" cried Hesden in alarm, springing up and going quickly to her side.

"That--that horrid thing, Hesden! Where _did_ you get it? Do you know it was that which made that terrible quarrel between your grandfather and Uncle John, when he struck him that--that last night, before John's body was found in the river. He was drowned crossing the ford, you know. I don't know what it was all about; but there was a terrible quarrel, and John wrote that on a sheet of paper and held it before your grandfather's face and said something to him--I don't know what. I was only a little girl then, but, ah me! I remember it as if it was but yesterday. And then father struck him with his cane. John fell as if he were dead. I was looking in at the window, not thinking any harm, and saw it all. I thought he had killed John, and ran away, determined not to tell. I never breathed a lisp of it before, son, and n.o.body ever knew of that quarrel, only your grandfather and me. I know it troubled him greatly after John died. Oh, I can see that awful paper, as John held it up to the light, as plain as this one in my hand now."

The slip of paper which she held contained only the following apparently unintelligible scrawl:

"And you never saw it but once?" asked Hesden, thoughtfully.

"Never but once before to-night, dear."

"It was not Uncle John's usual signature, then?"

"No, indeed. Is it a signature? She glanced curiously at the paper while Hesden pointed out the letters,

"That is what I take it to be, at least," he said. "Sure enough,"

said Mrs. Le Moyne, "and that might stand for John Richards or James Richards. It might be Uncle John or your grandfather, either, child." "True, but grandfather always wrote his name plainly, J. RICHARDS. I have seen a thousand of his signatures, I reckon.

Besides, Uncle John was not alive in 1790."

"Of course not. But what has that to do with the matter? What does it all mean anyhow? There must be some horrid secret about it, I am sure."

"I do not know what it means, mother, but I am determined to find out. That is what I have been at all day, and I will not stop until I know all about it."

"But how did you come to find it? What makes you think there is anything to be known about it?"

"This is the way it occurred, mother. The other day it became necessary to cut a door from the chamber over my room into the attic of the old kitchen, where I have been storing the tobacco. You know the part containing the dining-room was the original house, and was at first built of hewed logs. It was, in fact, two houses, with a double chimney in the middle. Afterward, the two parts were made into one, the rude stairs torn away, and the whole thing ceiled within and covered with thick pine siding without. In cutting through this, Charles found between two of the old logs and next to the c.h.i.n.king put in on each side to keep the wall flush and smooth, a pocketbook, carefully tied up in a piece of coa.r.s.e linen, and containing a yellow, dingy paper, which, although creased and soiled, was still clearly legible. The writing was of that heavy round character which marked the legal hand of the old time, and the ink, though its color had somewhat changed by time, seemed to show by contrast with the dull hue of the page even more clearly than it could have done when first written. The paper proved to be a will, drawn up in legal form and signed with the peculiar scrawl of which you hold a tracing. It purported to have been made and published in December, 1789, at Lancaster, in the State of Pennsylvania, and to have been witnessed by James Adiger and Johan Welliker of that town."

"How very strange!" exclaimed Mrs. Le Moyne. "I suppose it must have been the will of your grandfather's father."

"That was what first occurred to me," answered Hesden, "but on closer inspection it proved to be the will of James Richards, as stated in the caption, of Marblehead, in the State of Ma.s.sachusetts, giving and bequeathing all of his estate, both real and personal, after some slight bequests, to his beloved wife Edna, except--"

"Stop, my son," said Mrs. Le Moyne, quickly, "I remember now. Edna was the name of the wife of father's cousin James--"Red Jim," he called him. It was about writing to _her_ he was always talking toward the last. So I suppose he must have been dead."

"I had come to much the same conclusion," said Hesden, "though I never heard that grandfather had a cousin James until to-night. I should never have thought any more of the doc.u.ment, however, except as an old relic, if it had not gone on to bequeath particularly 'my estate in Carolina to my beloved daughter, Alice E., when she shall arrive at the age of eighteen years,' and to provide for the succession in case of her death prior to that time."

"That is strange," said Mrs. Le Moyne. "I never knew that we had any relatives in the State upon that side."

"That is what I thought," said the son. "I wondered where the estate was which had belonged to this James Richards, who was not our ancestor, and, looking further, I found it described with considerable particlarity. It was called Stillwater, and was said to be located on the waters of the Hyco, in Williams County."

"But the Hyco is not in Williams County," said his listener.

"No, mother, but it was then," he replied. "You know that county has been many times subdivided."

"Yes, I had forgotten that," she said. "But what then?"

"It went on," contined Hesden, "to say that he held this land by virtue of a grant from the State which was recorded in Registry of Deeds in Williams County, in Book A, page 391."

"It is an easy matter to find where it was, then, I suppose," said the mother.

"I have already done that," he replied, "and that is the strange and unpleasant part of what I had to tell you."

"I do hope," she said, smiling, "that you have not made us out cousins of any low-down family."

"As to that I cannot tell, mother; but I am afraid I have found something discreditable in our own family history."

"Oh, I hope not, Hesden," she said, plaintively. "It is so unpleasant to look back upon one's ancestors and not feel that they were strictly honorable. Don't tell me, please. I had rather not hear it."

"I wish you might not," said he; "but the fact which you referred to to-day--that you are, under the will of my grandfather, the owner of Mulberry Hill, makes it necessary that you should."

"Please, Hesden, don't mention that. I was angry then. Please forget it. What can that have to do with this horrid matter?"