Heppner gazette. [volume] (Heppner, Morrow County, Or.) 1892-1912, 1911-02-16
CHAPTER vi.

| When Roger Hews was dispatched
to Pennsylvania as the confidential
agent of Carboy, Passavant & Cozine
to verify the strange story told by
Andrew Meleen on his death-bed he
unearthed far more curious and
complicated series of episodes, so
unusual and unexpected as to suggest
to his fertile and not over-scrupulous
mind a plot by which the knowledge
thus gained might be turned to his
own advantage in several ways
Briefly tod, this is what he discov-
cred after much painstaking piecing
together of fact and inference:
When Minna Meleen found herself,
as she supposed deserted by her hus-
band so soon after their marriage, un-
able to bear the taunts and gibes Of
the village women, she left the out
skirts of Hazleton, then little more
than hamlet, and tramped across the
mountains to Nanticoke. Here, being
a complete stranger, she resumed her
maiden name of Minna Tod passing
herself off as a widow, and making a
living by sewing and doing chores.
Here a daughter was born to her. A
year and more had elapsed since
leaving Hazleton, when seemingly
authentic tidings reached her that her
husband, Andrew Meleen, had been
killed in battle. So to her the erst-
while fiction became a cruel and bit
ter fact
Believing herself free woman, and
being still young and handsome, her
scolding tongue and fiery temper
somewhat cooled by her misfortunes,
she permitted herself to be once more
wooed and won, this time by an arti-
san named John Trevecca.
In less than year she presented
Trevecca also with a daughter, but
this time she died during her ac-
couchement, and the infant with her,
and was buried in Nanticoke, exactly
as Roger Hews reported. This event
it must have been which reached the
ears of Andrew Meleen, denuded of
the one vital fact that Minna had
married again and that his own child
still lived.
To the day of her death John Trevec-
ca supposed she had been really
widow when she married him-as, of
course, did Minna herself. The only
deception she had practiced consisted
in the concealment of her true name.
When Minna died, John Trevecca
cherished her first-born, the little
Eunice, as his own. bringing her up
under his name, giving her a good
education, even sending her to
country seminary for a couple of
terms; then, in turn, he moved away,
and no one in Nanticoke heard of him
for many years.
So much of the past Roger Hews
had discovered when he returned to
San Francisco to report to Mr.. Car
boy We have seen how he sup
pressed the essential facts. complete
ly misleading the astute lawyer. When
he went east for good it was with
the idea OF tracing John Trevecca and
his stepdaughter. He hoped that the
girl still lived. and that, fortified with
proofs of the fore egOing facts. he could /
eventually produce her as the right
ful heir to the millions of old Andrew
Meleen-for that she was his legiti- |
mate daughter. born In lawful we'd
lock. no one would be able to gainsay |
in the face Of the evidence he could ]
produce.
In one Of two or three ways Hews
proposed to turn this valuable secret /
to his own profit: II the girl were /
alive and unmarried and IN humble /
he would try to make /
her his wife and divulge the truth /
in which case Roger Hews |
would have somewhat to say con-
cerning the spending and scattering /
Of old Andrews boarded wealth. II /
the girl were already welded to an /
other. then he hoped to find his ac-
count by selling her and her husband j