hat has developed within me to make him
bite the dust, even as he has made me bite it. I am not remorseless in
this. I gave him his chance to escape me, but, quite as I anticipated,
he has fallen into the trap that I set for him; else would you not be
reading this letter to-day, nearly a year after it was written.

"'Look close now, friend Placide. Nearly a year prior to the date that
you will get this, that is to say on the 23rd of last September, the
same day that I write this letter to you, I wrote Crittenton Madeira
that I should be dead when my letter reached him, dead under an assumed
name, in a strange land. It was the God's truth. I was dead when the
letter reached him. You are reading a letter from the dead now, friend
Placide.'" Steering stopped for a moment with a little shiver, but
Bernique urged him on, and he read again--"'Placide, in that letter to
Madeira were my instructions to turn over the Canaan Tigmores to Bruce
Steering, because, I being dead, the hills were due to pass on to my
heir. Well, Placide, has Madeira done that? Has he carried out my
instructions? Has he fulfilled his trust? Has Steering possession of the
Canaan Tigmores?

"'Like the thief that he is, Madeira has not done his part. Had he done
it, you would not be reading this letter to-day. I wrote it and placed
it with the clerk of Snow Mountain County, the county in which I died,
to be mailed to you on the 23rd of April, 1900, only in case no inquiry
had ever come from Madeira to verify my death. No inquiry has ever come!
So the clerk of the county, who is my executor, mails this letter to
you. This letter, Placide, is to attest that for seven months Crittenton
Madeira has been in unlawful possession of the Canaan Tigmores,
defrauding my heir and holding land under my name after being advised of
my death and of the means of verifying the advice. There are now, in the
keeping of the clerk of Snow Mountain County, two sealed envelopes, to
be delivered by him, the one to you, the one to Crittenton Madeira.
Madeira's has never been called for. See that yours is. In it you will
find the credentials of my identity, my sworn statements, and the
documents that prove my late encumbency of the entail. I am buried in
the pauper's field in the cemetery of Deep Canyon. The stone slab that I
have directed to be put over me bears the inscription, "James Gray, Died
September 23, 1899."

"'Get your proofs together, Placide, and carry them to the defr