Page:The Black Cat v06no11 (1901-08).djvu/37

Rh "It's as heavy as lead! Don't tell me that's all blackberries! Ann Seabrook, what's in this bucket—rocks?"

"Look and see for yourself, mother," and Ann danced into the next room and collapsed jojdully into a chair beside her father. Mrs. Seabrook followed, bringing the can, which she had dislodged from the bucket of berries. Then Ann told her story. Next she flew for Mr. Randolph, a lawyer friend of her father; and when she got back to the house, accompanied by Mr. Randolph, several neighbors, scenting something unusual, had come in. So the story was told again, after which the lid of the can was pried off with a hot poker, and Ann took from it a sealed envelope addressed to "The Person Finding this Can." Under the envelope was a chamois-skin bag, well filled with golden eagles and banknotes. The envelope contained a letter which ran as follows:

Thus it came about that many persons were made comfortable and happy by the contents of the old rusty can. For, though it did not contain a fortune, in the general acceptation of the term, it was sufficient to put the hospital on an independent footing, to enable Mr. Seabrook to pay off his indebtedness and buy the Hill Farm, and to give Ann an education.

Perhaps the person most disconcerted by the turn of events was Mrs. Merriweather, who bemoaned her own shortsightedness in not "smelling a mouse" on the occasion, some weeks before Mr. Pool's death, when he asked the signatures of herself and her handmaiden as witnesses to a "legal document".