tinued, "the letter is no doubt in the package which your mother
left with your Aunt Frances. When you feel equal to the painful task,
you should go over these papers--they are in that old oak box in the
garret--and then, perhaps, they had better be destroyed. You know," he
continued presently, in explanation of his being unable to give any
information about Sarah Pepper's whereabouts, "I never saw Mary's
cousin. I married your Aunt Frances, who was seventeen years your
mother's senior, at Plainfield, New Jersey, just before the death of
John Hollis and his wife, and before Sarah Thornton, your mother's
aunt, married Jackson Pepper. I brought my bride to Lawsonville, and
she never saw her Pepper connections, who lived, as you are aware, in
quite another part of the State."

"There is another fact in regard to your mother which I had better tell
you now, Abner," Dr. Dudley went on after a time. "She did not die at
Lawsonville, although I erected a stone there to her memory." He then
related to his nephew what James Drane had already learned from Tom
Gaines; namely, that Mary Hollis and her second husband, with her
little son, then four years of age, had emigrated to Kentucky in the
spring of 1782. Dudley likewise told Abner that Marshall Page had been
killed the following August, at Blue Licks; that Mary had died at Bryan
Station two days later; and that Marshall's brother had brought the
little Abner back to the Dudleys late in that same year.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE PACKAGE OF OLD LETTERS

"I think you once told me, Uncle Richard," Abner said, later in the
conversation with his uncle, "that Andrew Hite visited Lawsonville
while my mother was living with you."

"Yes, he did," Dudley replied, "a week or so before she and Page were
married."

"Did he learn of the cruel deception of which she was the victim?"

"Yes, I told him that, and of her approaching marriage and intended
removal to Kentucky. She was in poor health, and I feared a decline,
but she and Page thought her best chance for recovery was to marry, and
to find a new home far from anything that could remind her of her
connection with your father."

"This," said Abner, "explains Andrew Hite's will. He thought that my
mother, being his nearest relative, had the first claim upon him; but,
in case she died before he did--which doubtless appeared probable,
owing to her frail health--he preferred that his property should go to
his half-sister's child, ra