d his monthly accounts to the
Secretary of the Treasury were models of accuracy and a conscientious
regard for the public interest.

One small cloud appeared above the horizon, so small that the
unsuspecting inventor hardly noticed it, and yet it was destined to
develop into a storm of portentous dimensions. On May 17, he wrote to
F.O.J. Smith from New York:--

"Yours of the 27th April I have this morning received enclosing the
contracts for trenching. I have examined the contract and I must say I am
not exactly pleased with the terms. If I understood you right, before you
left for Boston, you were confident a contract could be made far within
the estimates given in to the Government, and I had hoped that something
could be saved from that estimate as from the others, so as to present
the experiment before the country in as cheap a form as possible.

"I have taken a pride in showing to Government how cheaply the Telegraph
could be laid, since the main objection, and the one most likely to
defeat our ulterior plans, is its great expense. I have in my other
contracts been able to be far within my estimates to Government, and I
had hoped to be able to present to the Secretary the contract for
trenching likewise reduced. There are plenty of applicants here who will
do it for much less, and one even said he thought for one half. I shall
do nothing in regard to the matter until I see you."

A great personal sorrow came to him also, a short time after this, to dim
the brilliance of success. On July 9, 1843, his dearly loved friend and
master, Washington Allston, died in Boston after months of suffering.
Morse immediately dropped everything and hastened to Boston to pay the
last tributes of respect to him whom he regarded as his best friend. He
obtained as a memento one of the brushes, still wet with paint, which
Allston was using on his last unfinished work, "The Feast of Belshazzar,"
when he was suddenly stricken. This brush he afterwards presented to the
National Academy of Design, where it is, I believe, still preserved.

Sorrowfully he returned to his work in Washington, but with the
comforting thought that his friend had lived to see his triumph, the
justification for his deserting that art which had been the bond to first
bring them together.

On July 24, in his report to the Secretary of the Treasury, he says:--

"I have also the gratification to report that the contract for the wire
has been faithfully fulfilled