that I am bound to acknowledge. There was an element of
jealousy of Anne Bullard. Both of us had tried to help Miss Emily. She
had foiled my attempt in her own endeavor, a mistaken endeavor, I felt.
But there was now to be no blemish on my efforts. I would no longer pry
or question or watch. It was too late.

In a curious fashion, each of us wished, I think, to prove the quality
of her tenderness for the little old lady who was gone beyond all human
tenderness.

So that evening, after dinner, I faced Anne in the library.

"Why not let things be as they are, Anne?" I asked. "It can do no good.
Whatever it is, and I do not know, why not let things rest?"

"Some one may find it," she replied. "Some one who does not care, as
I--as we care."

"Are you sure there is something?"

"She told me, near the last. I only don't know just where it is."

"And if you find it?"

"It is a letter. I shall burn it without reading. Although," she drew a
long breath, "I know what it contains."

"If in any way it comes into my hands," I assured her, "I shall let you
know. And I shall not read it."

She looked thoughtful rather than grateful.

"I hardly know," she said. "I think she would want you to read it if
it came to you. It explains so much. And it was a part of her plan. You
know, of course, that she had a plan. It was a sort of arrangement"--she
hesitated--"it was a sort of pact she made with God, if you know what I
mean."

That night Maggie found the letter.

I had gone upstairs, and Anne was, I think, already asleep. I heard what
sounded like distant hammering, and I went to the door. Some one was
in the library below. The light was shining out into the hall, and
my discovery of that was followed almost immediately by the faint
splintering of wood. Rather outraged than alarmed, I went back for
my dressing-gown, and as I left the room, I confronted Maggie in the
hallway. She had an envelope in one hand, and a hatchet in the other.

"I found it," she said briefly.

She held it out, and I took it. On the outside, in Miss Emily's writing,
it said, "To whom it may concern." It was sealed.

I turned it over in my hand, while Maggie talked.

"When I saw that girl crawling around," she said, "seems to me I
remembered all at once seeing Miss Emily, that day I found her, running
her finger along the baseboard. Says I to myself, there's something
more hidden, and she don't know where it is. But I do. So I lifted the
basebo