but say, don't be away
any longer than you can help."

"I won't!" He rode a short distance, turned in his saddle, waved his
hand and cried: "God bless you, my boy."

CHAPTER III.

ALL WAS DARKNESS.

Delays and difficulties of traveling, together with his own
determination to do the work thoroughly, prolonged DeGolyer's absence.
Nearly three months had passed. Evening was come, and from a distant
hill-top the returning traveler saw the steeple of Ulmata's church--a
black mark on the fading blush of lingering twilight. A chilly
darkness crept out of the valley. Hungry dogs barked in the dreary
village. DeGolyer could see but a single light. It burned in the
priest's house--a dark age, and as of yore, with all the light held by
the church. The weary man liberated his mule on a common, where its
former companions were grazing, and sought the house of his friends.
The house was dark and the doors were fastened. He knocked, and a
startling echo, an audible darkness, came from the valley. He knocked
again, and a voice cried from the street:

"Who's that?"

"Helloa, is that you, my boy?"

There was no answer, but a figure rushed through the darkness, seized
DeGolyer, and in a hoarse whisper said:

"Come where there's a light."

"Why, what's the matter, Henry?"

"Come where there's a light."

DeGolyer followed him to a wretched place that bore the name of a
public-house, and went with him into a room. A lamp sputtered on a
shelf. Young Sawyer caught DeGolyer's hands.

"I have waited so long for you to come back to this dreadful place. I
am all alone. Uncle is dead."

DeGolyer sat down without saying a word. He sat in silence, and then
he asked:

"When did he die?"

"About two weeks after you left."

"Did he kill himself?"

"Good God, no! Why did you think that?"

"Oh, I didn't really think it--don't know why I said it."

"He was sick only a few days, and the strangest thing has come to
light! He seemed to know before he was taken sick that he was going to
die, and he spent nearly a whole day in writing--writing something for
me--and the strangest thing has come to light. I can hardly realize
it. Here it is; read it. Don't say a word till you have read every
line of it. Strangest thing I ever heard of."

And this is what DeGolyer read by the light of the sputtering lamp:

"Years ago there lived in Salem, Mass., two brothers, George and
Andrew Witherspoon. Their parents had passed away when th