Here, just as the story began to appear in faint outline, my discoveries
stopped for a while. I ascertained the breadth of the original note by a
part of the middle-crease which remained, filled out the torn part
with blank paper, completed the divided words in the same character of
manuscript, and endeavored to guess the remainder, but no clairvoyant
power of divination came to my aid. I turned over the letters again,
remarking the neatness with which the addresses had been cut off, and
wondering why the man had not destroyed the letters and other memoranda
entirely, if he wished to hide a possible crime. The fact that they were
not destroyed showed the hold which his past life had had upon him even
to his dying hour. Weak and vain, as I had already suspected him to
be,--wanting in all manly fibre, and of the very material which a keen,
energetic villain would mould to his needs,--I felt that his love for
his sister and for "Helmine," and other associations connected with his
life in Germany and Poland, had made him cling to these worn records.

I know not what gave me the suspicion that he had not even found the
heart to destroy the exscinded names; perhaps the care with which they
had been removed; perhaps, in two instances, the circumstance of their
taking words out of the body of the letters with them. But the suspicion
came, and led to a re-examination of the leathern wallets. I could
scarcely believe my eyes, when feeling something rustle faintly as I
pressed the thin lining of an inner pocket, I drew forth three or four
small pellets of paper, and unrolling them, found the lost addresses!
I fitted them to the vacant places, and found that the first letters of
the sister in Breslau had been forwarded to "Otto Lindenschmidt," while
the letter to Poland was addressed "Otto von Herisau."

I warmed with this success, which exactly tallied with the previous
discoveries, and returned again to the Polish memoranda The words
"[Rus]sian officers" in "Jean's" note led me to notice that it had
been written towards the close of the last insurrection in Poland--a
circumstance which I immediately coupled with some things in the note
and on the leaf of the journal. "No tidings of Y" might indicate that
Count Kasincsky had been concerned in the rebellion, and had fled, or
been taken prisoner. Had he left a large amount of funds in the hands
of the supposed Otto von Herisau, which were drawn from time to time by
orders, the form