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Opening the drawer where it lay, the oblong blue envelope confronted her. The sight of it was distasteful. The indorsed side lay uppermost, and the words seemed like a mute reproach: "The Last Will and Testament of Samuel Merkell."
Major Carteret laughed. "Your Aunt Polly," he said, "was a remarkable woman, with a wonderful imagination, which seems to have grown more vivid as her memory and judgment weakened. Why should your father marry his negro housemaid? Mr. Merkell was never rated as a fool, he had one of the clearest heads in Wellington.
"Wen my ole mist'ess, Mis' 'Liz'beth Merkell, an' a good mist'ess she wuz, tuck sick fer de las' time, her sister Polly ole Mis' Polly Ochiltree w'at is now come ter de house ter he'p nuss her.
Merkell, dear Mr. Merkell, cried the hypocritical hussy, falling to her knees by his bedside, and shedding her crocodile tears, 'you owe me nothing. You have done more for me than I could ever repay. You will not die and leave me, no, no, it cannot be! "'Yes, I am going to die, I am dying now, Julia. But listen, compose yourself and listen, for this is a more important matter.
Snatching up the envelope, she glanced into it mechanically as she moved toward the next room, and perceived a thin folded paper which had heretofore escaped her notice. When opened, it proved to be a certificate of marriage, in due form, between Samuel Merkell and Julia Brown. It was dated from a county in South Carolina, about two years before her father's death. For a moment Mrs.
Merkell's dead body by your touch. Leave the house immediately, your day is over! "'I will not! she cried, rising to her feet and facing me with brazen-faced impudence. 'I have a right to stay, he has given me the right! "'Ha, ha! I laughed. 'Mr. Merkell is dead, and I am mistress here henceforth. Go, and go at once, do you hear? "'I hear, but I shall not heed. I can prove my rights!
It was a will, by which, in one item, her father devised to his daughter Janet, the child of the woman known as Julia Brown, the sum of ten thousand dollars, and a certain plantation or tract of land a short distance from the town of Wellington. The rest and residue of his estate, after deducting all legal charges and expenses, was bequeathed to his beloved daughter, Olivia Merkell. Mrs.
When it had been consumed, the carbon residue of one sheet still retained its form, and she could read the words on the charred portion. A sentence, which had escaped her eye in her rapid reading, stood out in ghostly black upon the gray background: "All the rest and residue of my estate I devise and bequeath to my daughter Olivia Merkell, the child of my beloved first wife." Mrs.
His elder brother had sacrificed his life on the bloody altar of the lost cause, and his father, broken and chagrined, died not many years later, leaving the major the last of his line. He had tried in various pursuits to gain a foothold in the new life, but with indifferent success until he won the hand of Olivia Merkell, whom he had seen grow from a small girl to glorious womanhood.
Do not delay one moment, or you may live to regret it. Say nothing until you have delivered the package, and then be guided by the advice which you receive, it will come from a friend of mine who will not see you wronged. "I slipped away from the door without making my presence known and entered, by a door from the hall, the room adjoining the one where Mr. Merkell lay.
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