composure now. He covered his
bald head with his hat, planted himself against the fence, his little,
twinkling eyes fixed on Trudy with an intense gaze, and continued his
story:

"Thar he set. And I walked in and I says to him, 'Air ye willin' to do
sump'n fer me, Mr. Doolittle?' And says he, 'Yes I be, Ichabod.' And
says I, 'It ain't goin' to take but jest a minute, Mr. Doolittle.' And
says he, 'Go ahead, Ichabod.'

"Says I, 'I was lookin' in the closet of the garret bed-room up to Mrs.
Spencer's house, whar I've been stayin', and I found a leetle box,
shoved 'way back, as though it wan't no use, anyhow. And, kind o'
hankerin' to know what 'twas, I broke it open. And thar was papers in
it,' says I-- 'and letters.

"'I can't read none myself,' says I-- 'only jest a leetle; but I looked
over them letters, and I worked and I figured, and I studied out a
leetle here and a leetle thar, till I begun to suspicion sump'n. Sump'n
awful quare--_awful quare!_ And this here one,' says I, 'I've fetched
down to ye, fer ye to jest look at. And if there ain't nothin' in it,'
says I, 'why, all right, and thank ye fer yer trouble. And if thar _is_
sump'n--' says I.

"And I handed him over that thar ole letter, and then I set still, and I
had my ole eyes glued right onto his face, and I ketched my breath and I
waited.

"'Well, I'll see, Ichabod,' says he. 'Ole letters are quare things,
Ichabod,' says he; 'but I'll look at it.'

"And he looked. He looked it up and down two er three times, and then he
read it clean through two er three times more. And then he took up his
spectacles off'n the table, and he read it ag'in, and he looked jest as
astonished as if he'd seen a ghost.

"Says he, 'I can't make it out. Reuben Wallace has been dead a year, and
this is the fust breath o' evidence that he left any money, although
everybody in this town has been clean up a stump about his _not_ leavin'
any. But this letter--dated two months afore he died,' says he, 'is from
a coal merchant in New York, findin' _that_ in the printin' up top o'
the letter. And it makes reference to the sum o' forty thousand dollars
invested by Reuben Wallace in his business. There's more in it,' says
he; 'but that's the principal thing.'

"And he got up and stood thar, shakin' his head and lookin' as if a
feather'd knock him down. And, says he, 'if this means anything at all,
Ichabod, it means an awful lot! It means that Reuben Wallace was worth
forty thousand