s with that account of my misdeeds which changed
all my prospects in life. It was my twenty-first birthday and the
old man had just informed me that as the eldest son I might expect
the house in which we stood to be mine one day and with it a secret
which has been handed down from father to son ever since the Moores
rose to eminence in the person of Colonel Alpheus. Then he noted
that I was now of age and immediately went on to say: 'This means
that you must be told certain facts, without the knowledge of which
you would be no true Moore. These facts you must hereafter relate
to your son or whoever may be fortunate enough to inherit from you.
It is the legacy which goes with this house and one which no
inheritor as yet has refused either to receive or to transmit.
Listen. You have often noted the gold filigree ball which I wear
on my watch-guard. This ball is the talisman of our house, of this
house. If, in the course of your life you find yourself in an
extremity from which no issue seems possible mind the strictness
of the injunction--an extremity from which no issue seems possible
(I have never been in such a case; the gold filigree ball has never
been opened by me) you will take this trinket from its chain, press
upon this portion of it so, and use what you will find inside, in
connection with--' Alas! it was at this point John Judson came
rushing in and those disclosures were made which lost me my father's
regard and gave to the informer my rightful inheritance, together
with the full secret of which I only got a part. But that part
must help me now to the whole. I have seen the filigree ball many
times; Veronica has it now. But its contents have never been shown
me. If I knew what they were and why the master of this secret
always left the library--"

Here the memorandum ceased with a long line straggling from the
letter y as if the writer had been surprised at his task.

The effect upon me of these remarkable words was to heighten my
interest and raise me into a state of renewed hope, if not of
active expectation.

Another mind than my own had been at work along the only groove
which held out any promise of success, and this mind, having at
its command certain family traditions, had let me into a most
valuable secret. Another mind! Whose mind? That was a question
easily answered. But one man could have written these words; the
man who was thrust aside in early life in favor of his younger
brot