sticking to an old soil, intermarrying over and over again with the same
respectable families, till it has made common stock of all their vices,
weaknesses, madnesses. Have you no documents, I say, no muniment deed?"

"None," said Septimius.

"No old furniture, desks, trunks, chests, cabinets?"

"You must remember," said Septimius, "that my Indian ancestor was not very
likely to have brought such things out of the forest with him. A wandering
Indian does not carry a chest of papers with him. I do remember, in my
childhood, a little old iron-bound chest, or coffer, of which the key was
lost, and which my Aunt Keziah used to say came down from her
great-great-grandfather. I don't know what has become of it, and my poor
old aunt kept it among her own treasures."

"Well, my friend, do you hunt up that old coffer, and, just as a matter of
curiosity, let me see the contents."

"I have other things to do," said Septimius.

"Perhaps so," quoth the doctor, "but no other, as it may turn out, of quite
so much importance as this. I'll tell you fairly: the heir of a great
English house is lately dead, and the estate lies open to any
well-sustained, perhaps to any plausible, claimant. If it should appear
from the records of that family, as I have some reason to suppose, that a
member of it, who would now represent the older branch, disappeared
mysteriously and unaccountably, at a date corresponding with what might be
ascertained as that of your ancestor's first appearance in this country;
if any reasonable proof can be brought forward, on the part of the