The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1870-04-09
Lost in The Post-0ffice.
By HESDA sTRETToN.
[ COncluSiOn.l

When nothing could be discovered by
thesurveyor or detective old Lawrences
relatives held a family meeting to con-
suit upon what was to be done. But IT
was not very clear what the law would
permit them to do in such clrcum-
stances; and there was not one of them
who would have agreed to proceed as ii
he had died intestate. Every lawyer IN
Thonbury had given some opinion, and
received fee for it, upon the point;
but nothing was clear and certain.
Those were the most miserable three
months that ever passed over my head.
The changed faces of my townsmen,
the suspicion attaching to me, and the
near prospect of ANONYMOUSLY losing
nv post, were hard to bear. But the
deepening conviction of Katie's guilt,
and my grad ually decreasing love for
her, were incomparably harder. She
did not fail to feel the GOODNESS and dis
trust of my manner, and being girl of
spirit she did not fail to mark the
change by a corresponding change in
herself l ponAered over such questions
as these,-how was the will made,
and what had she done with iti Had
she destroyed iti Or was it still in ex-
istence, to be discovered, perhaps, at
some future day to work just judg-
ment upon herr However it might be,
| knew that my Katie was lost to me
forever; yet not for worlds would l
throw upon her the burden of suspicion
which weighed so heavily upon me.
The last day of the year came. There
had been a semi-official letter in the
ra1,nf MI inn N ~
that the people of ThorDbury were dis
satisfied at my retaining an important
and confidential place in the Post-office,
and that their complaints were about to
be noticed from headquarters. My father,
only partially recovered, was very low,
and nv mother and sisters cried at inter-
walls during the day. / found myself,
as usual, in the office about the same
hour in the evening as when old Law
rence's will was brOugh in and laid be-
fore me on the counter, just as had
finished and folded up the quartely
money order account. Another quarter
was ended, and / said, with some Bit
t9rness of tone, "that there could be no
objection to me making up the account
once again. The forms upon which
they were drawn out were kept in a
small drawer in the counter, and
found them packet rather tightly, hav-
ing evidently been pushed in in some
haste and confusion. The drawer would
only open with sharp jerk, and as l
gave it, heard sound of something
falling behind, while the drawer came
out in my hand, l stopped to look what
had fallen, and-you will have guessed
already-theIe lay old Lawrence's will,
looking precisely as it had done when
it lay on the counter before me, directed
to "R. Grey, ESD, Mitre Buildings, The
Temple, Lon DON"
gave q great shout, which made my
father spring up from his desk, and l
fell down on my knees before the empty
space where the drawer had been,
scarcely able to stretch out my hand to
touch the will. How it had got there
was plain enough to me. / bad left it
lying amongst the forms, which were
not unlike IL in shape and size, and the
clerks, coming in to their hurried and
unaecustomed work, had cleared the
counter after summary fashion, by
sweeping them all away together into
the drawer beneath, which was used for
ITO ObucI Du1POoCt anu bONcE ODcueu CA
cept on the last days of March, June,
September, and December. 1t had been
living there all the while, under my
hand a score Of times q day, while l had
been suffering one of the bitterest con-
hicts man can suffer for it.
When looked round, with the will
in my trembling hand, there stood my
father and the two clerks from the outer
Office, who had rushed in on hearing
nv shout, while through the door
which they had left open, lucky unit
of the public surveyed the scene
"Old Lawrence's willH gasped, and
the unit Immediately darted into the
streets to proclaim the discovery:
Almost before l could recover my
voice, which sounded choked and up-
natural in my own ears, or had fisen
frem my knees and picked up the fallen
drawer, the outer Office was invaded by
q crowd of excited and anxious iuqui-
rers, some of whom pressed into our
sanctum, and began shaking hands with
me in that frenzy of good-w and con-
graduation which now and then
breaks out among the sympsthizing
public.
Old Lawrence's relatives were not
long behind their townspeople; they
came in agitated numbers, Katie and
her father among them, with Mr.. Grey,
who had been spending his Christmas
at Thornbury. She looked pale, and
my heart smote me for my base, treach-
erous, insane suspicious of her. She
neither glanced at me nor spoke to me,
and when my father invited all the rela-
tives and Mr.. Shape to go on into the
house, she PASSED me. as stood humbly
at the fsor, with averted eyes and Q
high dignified carriage.
As both Grey and Shape were pres
4 =, L.