We regained the bedchamber appropriated to myself, and I then
remarked that my dog had not followed us when we had left it. He
was thrusting himself close to the fire, and trembling. I was
impatient to examine the letters; and while I read them, my servant
opened a little box in which he had deposited the weapons I had
ordered him to bring, took them out, placed them on a table close
at my bed head, and then occupied himself in soothing the dog, who,
however, seemed to heed him very little.

The letters were short,--they were dated; the dates exactly thirty-
five years ago. They were evidently from a lover to his mistress,
or a husband to some young wife. Not only the terms of expression,
but a distinct reference to a former voyage, indicated the writer
to have been a seafarer. The spelling and handwriting were those
of a man imperfectly educated, but still the language itself was
forcible. In the expressions of endearment there was a kind of
rough, wild love; but here and there were dark unintelligible hints
at some secret not of love,--some secret that seemed of crime. "We
ought to love each other," was one of the sentences I remember,
"for how everyone else would execrate us if all was known." Again:
"Don't let anyone be in the same room with you at night,--you talk
in your sleep." And again: "What's done can't be undone; and I
tell you there's nothing against us unless the dead could come to
life." Here there was underlined in a better handwriting (a
female's), "They do!" At the end of the letter latest in date the
same female hand had written these words: "Lost at sea the 4th of
June, the same day as--"

I put down the letters, and began to muse over their contents.