the last few months, and have any quantity of enemies.  I am going to close my house, now that my deceased husband’s estate is settled, and spend a few years in Europe.  Mr. Thomas Sildon is well provided with funds for the care of the child during my absence, and will pay you a hundred dollars every quarter.  Let no one see this letter, not even your husband.  And when I return I will give you an extra remuneration, and adopt the child as my own.  Mr. Sildon will tell you where to find me when I return.  Your friend, “C.  A. M.”

“There, father,” says Maria, “there is something more than we know about, connected with this letter.  One thing always discovers another-don’t you think it may have something to do with that lady who has two or three times come in here, and always appeared so nervous when she inquired about Mag Munday? and you recollect how she would not be content until we had told her a thousand different things concerning her.  She wanted, she said, a clue to her; but she never could get a clue to her.  There is something more than we know of connected with this letter,” and she lays the old damp stained and crumpled letter on the table, as the old servant enters bearing on a small tray their humble supper.

“Now, sit up, my daughter,” says the old man, helping her to a sandwich while she pours out his dish of tea, “our enjoyment need be none the less because our fare is humble.  As for satisfying this lady about Mag Munday, why, I have given that up.  I told her all I knew, and that is, that when she first came to Charleston-one never knows what these New Yorkers are—­she was a dashing sort of woman, had no end of admirers, and lived in fine style.  Then it got out that she wasn’t the wife of the man who came with her, but that she was the wife of a poor man of the name of Munday, and had quit her husband; as wives will when they take a notion in their heads.  And as is always the way with these sort of people, she kept gradually getting down in the world, and as she kept getting more and more down so she took more and more to drink, and drink brought on grief, and grief soon wasted her into the grave.  I took pity on her, for she seemed not a bad woman at heart, and always said she was forced by necessity into the house of Madame Flamingo-a house that hurries many a poor creature to her ruin.  And she seemed possessed of a sense of honor not common to these people; and when Madame Flamingo turned her into the street,—­as she does every one she has succeeded in making a wretch of,—­and she could find no one to take her in, and had nowhere to lay her poor head, as she used to say, I used to lend her little amounts, which she always managed somehow to repay.  As to there being anything valuable in the dress, I never gave it a thought; and when she would say if she could have restored to her the dress, and manage to get money enough to get to New York, I thought it was only the result of her sadness.”