“I shall marry you,” Jack said, folding her in his arms.  “Do you think I care who your family are, or how queer they are?  You’ll never be queer.  I’ll shield you so carefully from every care that you can’t even spell the word.”

He took her hands and made her look at him, while he kissed her lips and said, “It is you I want, with all the Harrises and Crackers in Christendom thrown in, if necessary.  Are you satisfied?”

He knew she was, and was kissing her again when Jake appeared with the trunk, which he said had held Miss Dory’s clothes when she went to Georgia.  There was a musty odor about it when he opened it, and the few papers inside were yellow with age.

“Dis yer is de reader Miss Dory use’ to go over so much,” Jake said, handing the book to Eloise, who turned its worn pages reverently, as if touching the hands of the dead girl, who, Jake said, “had rassled with the big words an’ de no ‘count pieces.  She liked de po’try, an’ got by heart ‘bout de boy on de burnin’ deck, but de breakin’ waves floo’d her, ’case ’twan’t no story like Cassy-by-anker.”

He pointed the latter poem out to Eloise, who said, “Will you give me this book?”

Jake hesitated before he replied, “He wanted it, the Colonel, an’ I tole him no, but you’re different.  I’ll think about it.”

Mr. Mason had returned by this time, and with Jack was looking at the bundle of letters tied with a satin ribbon which Jake said Miss Dory had taken from her white dress, the one he believed she was married in, as it was her bestest.  There were four letters and a paper which did not seem to be a letter, and which slipped to the floor at Eloise’s feet as Jack untied the ribbon.  There was also a small envelope containing a card with “James Crompton” upon it, the one Mandy Ann had carried her mistress on a china plate, and which poor Dora had kept as a souvenir of that visit.  With the card were the remains of what must have been a beautiful rose.  The petals were brown and crumbling to dust, but still gave out a faint perfume, which Eloise detected.  While she was looking at these mementos of a past, Jack was running his eyes over the almost illegible directions on the letters, making out “Miss Lucy Brown, Atlanta, Ga.”

“That doesn’t help us much,” he said to Mr. Mason.  “Brown is a common name, and the Atlanta before the war was not like the Atlanta of to-day.”

“Perhaps something inside will give a cue,” Mr. Mason suggested, and Jack opened one of the letters carefully, for it was nearly torn apart.

The spelling was bad and the writing was bad, but it rang true with a young man’s love for the girl of his choice, and it seemed to Jack like sacrilege to read it.  Very hurriedly he went through the four letters, finding nothing to guide him but “Atlanta,” and a few names of people who must have been living in the vicinity.

“Here’s another,” Eloise said, passing him the paper which she had picked from the floor.