Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp Part 5

"From England. No! From Scotland," murmured Nan, looking over her mother's shoulder in her eagerness. She read the neatly printed card in the corner of the foreign envelope:

KELLAM & BLAKE HADBORNE CHAMBERS EDINBURGH

Mrs. Sherwood was whispering her maiden name over to herself. She looked up suddenly at her husband with roguish eyes.

"I'd almost forgotten there ever was such a girl as Jessie Adair Blake,"

she said.

"Oh, Momsey!" squealed Nan, with clasped hands and immense impatience.

"Don't, DON'T be so slow! Open it!"

"No-o," her mother said, with pursed lips. "No, honey. The other comes first, I reckon."

It was a letter typewritten upon her cousin's letter-head; but it was not dictated by Mr. Adair MacKenzie. Instead, it was from Mr.

MacKenzie's secretary, who stated that her employer had gone to Mexico on business that might detain him for several weeks.

"A letter addressed by you to Mr. MacKenzie arrived after his departure and is being held for him with other personal communications until his return; but being a.s.sured that you are the Jessie Adair Blake, now Sherwood--to whom the enclosed letter from Scotland is addressed, I take the liberty of forwarding the same. The Scotch letter reached us after Mr. MacKenzie's departure, likewise. Will you please acknowledge the receipt of the enclosure and oblige?"

This much of the contents of the secretary's letter was of particular interest to the Sherwoods. Momsey's voice shook a little as she finished reading it. Plainly she was disappointed.

"Cousin Adair, I am sure, would have suggested something helpful had he been at home," she said sadly. "It, it is a great disappointment, Robert."

"Well, well!" replied Mr. Sherwood, perhaps not without some secret relief. "It will all come out right. At least, your cousin hasn't refused his a.s.sistance. We shall be established somewhere before he returns from his Mexican trip."

"I, I did depend so much upon Adair's good will and advice," signed Momsey.

"But, dear me suz!" gasped Nan impatiently. "What are you folks bothering over that for? It isn't Cousin Adair that I want to know about. It's this letter, Momsey," and she seized the thin yet important envelope from Scotland and shook it before her mother's eyes.

"Better look into it, Momsey," advised Mr. Sherwood easily, preparing to return to the cinder sifting. "Maybe it's from some of your relatives in the Old Country. I see 'Blake' printed in the corner. Didn't your father have an uncle or somebody, who was steward on the estate of a Scotch Laird of some renown?"

"Heck, mon!" cried Momsey, with her usual gaiety, and throwing off the cloud of gloom that had momentarily subdued her spirit. "Ye air a wise cheil. Ma faither talked muckle o' Uncle Hughie Blake, remimberin' him fra' a wee laddie when his ain faither took him tae Scotland, and tae Castle Emberon, on a veesit."

Nan and Papa Sherwood laughed at her when she a.s.sumed the Scotch burr of her forebears. With precision she cut the flap of this smaller envelope.

She felt no excitement now. She had regained control of herself after the keen disappointment arising from the first letter.

She calmly opened the crackly sheet of legal looking paper in her lap.

It was not a long letter, and it was written in a stiff, legal hand, instead of being typewritten, each character as precise as the legal mind that dictated it:

"Mistress Jessie Adair Blake, (Known to be a married woman, but wedded name unknown to writer.)

"Dear Madam: It is my duty to inform you that your father (the late Randolph Hugh Blake) was made sole beneficiary of his late uncle, Mr.

Hugh Blake, the Laird of Emberon's steward, by a certain testament, or will, made many years ago. Mr. Hugh Blake has recently died a bachelor, and before his demise he added a codicil to the above testament, or will, naming you, his great niece, his sole heir and beneficiary.

"There are other relatives who may make some attempt to oppose your claim; but none of near blood. Your t.i.tle to the said estate is clear; but it is quite necessary that you should appear before our Courts with proofs of ident.i.ty, and so forth. On receipt from you of acknowledgment of this letter, with copies of identification papers (your grandfather's naturalization papers, your father's discharge from army, your own birth certificate and marriage lines, and so forth) I will give myself the pleasure of forwarding any further particulars you may wish, and likewise place at your command my own services in obtaining possession for you of your great uncle's estate.

"The said estate of Mr. Hugh Blake, deceased, amounts, in real and personal property, including moneys in the bank, to about the sum, roughly estimated, of 10,000 pounds.

"Respectfully, your servant,

"Andrew Blake, Solicitor and Att'y."

Nan had leaned over her mother's shoulder, big-eyed, scarce believing the plainly written words she read. It was preposterous, ridiculous, fanciful, a dream from which she must awake in a moment to the full realization of their dreadful need of just such a G.o.dsend as this.

It was her father's voice that roused the girl. He had not seen the letter and Momsey had read it silently to herself.

"Look out, Nancy! What is the matter with your mother?"

With a cry the girl caught the frail little lady in her arms as the letter slipped unheeded from her lap to the floor. Mrs. Sherwood's eyes were closed. She had fainted.

Chapter VI. A SPRAT FOR A HERRING

"I don't need the doctor this time, honey; joy never killed yet."

So said Mrs. Sherwood, opening her eyes to see the scared face of Nan close above her. Then she saw her husband at her feet, quietly chafing her hands in his own hard, warm palms. She pulled hers gently from his clasp and rested them upon his head. Mr. Sherwood's hair was iron-gray, thick, and inclined to curl. She ran her little fingers into it and clung tightly.

"Let, let me get my breath!" she gasped. Then, after a moment she smiled brilliantly into the wind-bitten face of the kneeling man. "It's all over, Robert," she said.

"My dear!" he cried thickly; while Nan could not wholly stifle the cry of fear that rose to her lips.

"It's all over," repeated the little woman. "All the worry, all the poverty, all the uncertainty, all the hard times."

Mr. Sherwood looked startled indeed. He had no idea what the letter from Scotland contained, and he feared that his wife, who had already suffered so much, was for the moment quite out of her head.

"My poor Jessie," he began, but her low, sweet laugh stopped him.

"Not poor! Never poor again, Robert!" she cried. "G.o.d is very good to us. At the very darkest hour He has shown us the dawn. Robert, we are rich!"

"Great goodness, Jessie! What do you mean? Exclaimed Mr. Sherwood, stumbling to his feet at last.

"It's true! It's true, Papa Sherwood!" Nan cried, clapping her hands.

"Don't you call ten thousand dollars riches?"

"Ten, thousand, dollars?" murmured her father. He put his hand to his head and looked confusedly about for a seat, into which he weakly dropped. Nan had picked up the letter and now she dramatically thrust it into his hand.

"Read that, Papa Sherwood!" she said commandingly.

He read the communication from the Scotch attorney, first with immense surprise, then with profound doubt. Who but a young imaginative girl, like Nan, or a woman with unbounded faith in the miracles of G.o.d, like her mother, could accept such a perfectly wonderful thing as being real?

"A hoax," thought the man who had worked so hard all his life without the least expectation of ever seeing a penny that he did not earn himself. "Can it be that any of those heedless relatives of my wife's in Memphis have attempted a practical joke at this time?"

He motioned for Nan to bring him the envelope, too. This he examined closely, and then read the communication again. It looked all regular.

The stationery, the postmark, the date upon it, all seemed perfectly in accord.

Mrs. Sherwood's gay little laugh shattered the train of her husband's thought. "I know what the matter is with you, Papa Sherwood," she said.

"You think it must be a practical joke."