Second Period Third Narrative - Chapter I

Contributed by FRANKLIN BLAKE

In the spring of the year eighteen hundred and forty-nine I was
wandering in the East, and had then recently altered the travelling
plans which I had laid out some months before, and which I had
communicated to my lawyer and my banker in London.

This change made it necessary for me to send one of my servants to
obtain my letters and remittances from the English consul in a certain
city, which was no longer included as one of my resting-places in my new
travelling scheme. The man was to join me again at an appointed place
and time. An accident, for which he was not responsible, delayed him on
his errand. For a week I and my people waited, encamped on the
borders of a desert. At the end of that time the missing man made his
appearance, with the money and the letters, at the entrance of my tent.

"I am afraid I bring you bad news, sir," he said, and pointed to one of
the letters, which had a mourning border round it, and the address on
which was in the handwriting of Mr. Bruff.

I know nothing, in a case of this kind, so unendurable as suspense. The
letter with the mourning border was the letter that I opened first.

It informed me that my father was dead, and that I was heir to his great
fortune. The wealth which had thus fallen into my hands brought its
responsibilities with it, and Mr. Bruff entreated me to lose no time in
returning to England.