Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 March 1882 — A LOST KEY. [ARTICLE]

A LOST KEY.

Edgar Arnton had made a highly important discovery, and one that troubled him. He was a surgeon, and was given to examining hearts. For a full hour, ist the gathering summer twilight of the Park avenue, he had applied his faculties to the testing, in another sense, of his own. The decision to which, very unwittingly, he. came, was that his dim suspicions of the past three months were well-founded —he was in love, The thrill which had gone through him as he olasped Kate Gerrow’s hand on leaving her uncle’s gates that very evening pointed in that direction. The expansion of soul and the exhilaration of mind which he continually experienced in her presence, the longing that often seized nim in his moments of professional disgust and weariness to feast his eyes, if only for an instant, on Kate’s bonny faoe, all drove home the unwelcome conviction. In the coarse of his final tarn along the broad path between the whispering poplars, Edgar formed a resolution. Entering Brixby, he encountered the very friend he had desired to consult. Mr. Trent was a solicitor, many years the young medical man’s senior, and his only confident in all the countryside. "If you are disengaged for ten minutes or so, Mr. Trent,” said Edgar, “I should like to have a talk with yon about Mr. Gerrow’s nieoe.” "lain perfectly at your service, mdn ami. You are smitten by the great appreciation of Miss Gerrow’s charms. 1 have seen it coming a long time.” Edgar smiled a little sardonically, in the dimness. "It is a lawyer’s business to be farsighted,” he said ; “ I have found it out now—the fact of whioh you speak—and, I am afraid, only just in time. ” A harshness was in his tones which surprised the listener. “I do not understand,” said Mr. Trent. " Why, I mean that had the disease, gone further I might have proved unable to overcome it—as I mean to do now.”

“You astonish me more and more. Miss Gerrow is beautiful, of good birth and well educated. She is an heiress into the bargain; and if she cares for you, and her uncle consents, what possible obstacle can intervene ?” “I’ou have said,” returned Edgar moodily; “ she is an heiress.” ’i he lawyer bit his lip to keep from a loud explosion of misplaced merriment. “ The Very thing that, whether she were pret y or plain, would make Miss Gerrow an attraction to most Buitors. ” “I am aware of it But lam not like the majority ; lam poor, my prospects are barren enough ; all the world would say I was fortune-hunting—marrying for money if it came to a marriage. She might learn to think so too, and that I could not bear. I have seen plenty of this already—in my own family.” The concentrated pathos of the last sentence, and the involuntary sigh which concluded it, touched the solicitor. His meditated words of bantering remonstrance were not uttered. “ What shall you do then ?” he asked. “Shun the danger, fight the temptation, work harder. I cannot run away as in other circumstances I might be minded to do; my living lies in Brixby. But you can help me considerably in the struggle if you will.” “I—how?” " When you see me running any risk of a tete-a-tete with Miss Gerrow and you can possibly interfere, do so. ” . “ And make you hate me for it; I will not promise. ” " I shall not hate you, I shall be very grateful, I must meet her frequently at the house of mutual friends. You will often be able to make me your debtor in the way I say.” The route the pair had taken brought them at this point with the cordon of habitations again. With a few more words of less special interest they parted for the night. As Elgar’s tall, athletic figure disappeared among the mingling shadows of tree and cottage, the lawyer turned and gazed for a moment. " Poor fellow ! there has been misery in his lot in earlier years, I know,” he muttered to himseif; “ and he is by no means sure of his own power to withstand in this matter, or he would not appeal to any friend. ” It was even so; Edgar Arnton mistrusted himself despite the apparent firmness of his resolution. As fate would have it, a week later he was thrown into Kate Gerrow’s company even more constantly and more intimately than before. Mr. Gerrow was taken suddenly and seriously ill. Edgar had to attend him and to labor hard to ward off an attack of probably fatal apoplexy. They were a lonely couple, the wealthy, eccentric old owner of Brixby Lodge and the fair young girl who was reputed his heiress. Kate was an only child and an orphan. Neither she nor her uncle had any kinsfolk in the neighborhood. Cousins, Kate believed she had somewhere in the North; but there had been an estrangement in the family, and these she had never seeD.

“T 8 it anything dangerous, Mr. Arnton? My uncle will recover, will he not ? ” Kate asked when, atter a careful examination of his patient, Edgar stood for a minute or two in the wide, old-fashioned hall. Very charming looked the questioner, and t litre was no wonder Am ton was once more magnetized. " I sincerely trust so, Miss Gerrow,” he replied ; “of course I dare not disguise from you that there is risk-—grave risk, that is inseparable from such cases; but X do not see the least reason for despair. Pray do not worry yourself unnecessarily.” “ My uncle is the only relative I have living in the whole West of England,” she said. ‘‘You will not conceal his real condition from me at any time, I beg, Mr. Amton,” she subjoined. “ No, Miss Gerrow, I will be quite frank ; although it is a medical privilege to be discreet, you know. But you will

■ need a trained none. Hie work will be to delicate for ordinary servants, and too wearying by far for you. M»y I send one from the Holsteaa Infirmary ? ” “If you think that that will be the best coarse to take. But l shall certainly wait on uncle principally myself.” And so Kate did. And day by day in his visits Edgar Arnton met her, and felt more deeply, more indubitably in love. Not that he abandoned in any degree his determination to refrain from becoming Kate’s snitor. That resolve was as firm as ever. He simply elected to drift with the tide. The patient gradually recovered, and bore grateful testimony to Edgar’s professional a kill. The mend was not long, though; a message in the dead of night some few weeks after took Edgar hurriedly away to Brixby Lodge, to find that another and a severer seizure had proved immediately fatal. Kate’s grief was intense. Edgar must have seemed strongly cold and distant in the dark days before the funeral, for he was compelled to keep down his sympathy with an iron hand, and to breathe condolence in the most conventional of phrases. But for so doiug he felt morally sure that his vow of personal silence would have been irretrievably broken, and he meant to corquer yet. But in the oourse of time an odd rumor reached him. The old man’s will had been read, and Kate was not an heiress after all. With a chaos of conflicting emotions surging within his breast, Edgar called on Mr. Trent and learned the truth. “The document is dated ten years back, before Miss Gerrow came to live with her uncle,” said the solicitor. "There is no doubt as to its genuineness. Every one thought he had made a later one—l did myself, bat none can be found beside this. I suppose he put tbe business off, as so many people do, until it was too late. The property all goes to a wealthy Lancashire manufacturer.” "How does Kate—Miss Gerrow take it?”

"As quietly as yon may guess. Some girls would have been almost killed by the disappointment, but not she. Yon had better go up and see her. She is not an heiress now. Indeed, she’ll have barely enough to live upon, unless this cousin does something for her—-which is doubtful.” Edgar took the advioe, and went up to the desolate great house the same afternoon. Some commonplaces passed, and then that old, old story burst forth which somehow always seems to me far too sacred to be written out in detail on any author’s soribbling paper. Edgar made a full confession, and not in vain. "The saddest experiences of my youth,” he said, "came through a marriage for money, and through misplaced confidence. Very early I vowed that that mistake should in no shape ever be mine ; that nobody should ever throw fortune-hunting of that kind in my teeth. And yet ” —with a smile of infinite content—"l am not certain, Kate, after all, whether love would not have beaten me in the end.”

“I hope so,” the maiden answered, shyly. _ There was a sale at Brixby Lodge, and in due course one of the Lancashire manufacturer’s sons, who had recently married, came down and was installed as his father’s representative. Edgar Arnton had arranged that Kate Gerrow 6hould reside in London with his sisters until such an interval had passed as etiquette prescribed. At the sale he was a large purchaser, and poor, as, by comparison, he had onoe styled himself, the house he furnished was one of the best in the village. - Wedding and honeymoon were both over Edgar had just come in from his day’s round of visits, and wa? standing with his wife at the window, gazing out at the fast-falling snowflakes that foreboded a white Christmastide. Suddenly there was a crash behind that caused both to look round. A Persian kitten gamboling mischievously on the top of an escritoire, had knocked down the plaster figure of an antiqne cup-bearer. The frargile article of vertu was broken into a dozen fragments, amid which a tiny silver key revealed itself. "That is where the key of uncle’s Japanese cabinet went to, then,” said Kate ; "the hand and arm of the image must have been hollow, and the key, onoe put into the cup, slipped through into the interior. "Odd, certainly,” answered Edgar; "let us try if it is the one.” He went out, and from the next room fetched a small inlaid cabinet of exquisite workmanship. The key fitted at once.

“ 1 was sure it would. I knew it again at first sight,” Baid the lady. "It is fortunate we waited and did not trouble to force the box open; that would inevitably have spoilt it. I don’t suppose there is anything in the casket, though.” " Oh, but there is !” ejaculated Edgar, as at that instant he poised up the delicate lid and caught sight of a tight little roll of paper. Kate watched in 6ilent surprise; Edgar slowly undid the bundle, a shrewd suspicion of what he had found flashing upon him and making his ordinarily firm, white fingers hot and bungling. "It is your uncle’s real will, his last and legal will, I should say rather,” Edgar said with a gasp, "found just where he might have been expected to have placed it, and where searchers might equally have been expected to miss it. Quite a wonder I bought the cabinet!” And then he read slowly, till the full moment of the discovery had been realized by both brains, how land, and houses, and money snugly invested in consols, had been all devised, without either reservation or qualification, to Mr. Gerrow’s beloved niece, Kate, “ the companion of his old age, and the faithfulguardian of his interests.” Husband and wife gave each other a long, earnest look, which ended in a mutual smile and a caress. “Despite all precautions you have married an heiress, then, Edgar,” said Kate, merrily ; " the pity of it is, it’s quite late in the day to disown her now.” " As if I could possibly wish to !” Mr. Trent laughed likewise. " All’s well that ends well,” he said. He was speedily put in possession of the recovered document, acquainted Mr. Mudbury with the circumstances, and convinced the manufacturer how futile it would be to contest his cousin’s claim. In a very brief space the Lancashire gentleman returned in disgust to his own district. Brixby Lodge became the residence of the Arntons and their children.

Both husband and wife treasure the once-lost key above its weight in gold. But for its opportune disapoearance two loving souls might have remained apart. To it Kate says she owes her husband, and by it Edgar thinks truly that he has both kept his vow (in the spirit), and won a wife with a fortune. An honest farmer in the" State of Pennsylvania married a miss from a fashionable boarding school for his second wife. He was struck dumb with her eloquence, and gaped with wonder at her learning. «You might,” said he, “bore a hole through the Solid airth and chuck in a jnillßtone, and she’ll tell you to a shavin’ how long the stone will be goin’ clean through. I used for to think that it was air I sucked in every time I expired; however, she tel ed me that I had been sucking, in frwo kinds of g) n — 01 gh» and high gin ! My stars ! Im a temperance man, apd yet have been drinking ox gin and high gin all my life I”

The coronation jot the Czar Nicholas cost 6,000j000 rubles, and that of Alexander Hi? J7,000,0(K> rubles’ f