this matter; but I'd stake my reputation for acuteness that this old Richard Dudley knows--only, of course, he bases his nephew's claim upon the fact that Mary Hollis Page was still living at the time Hite made this insane will. Abner Dudley, or Abner Logan, as the case may be, stated that she died in August, 1782. My first step must be to ascertain if this be correct. Let me see, Tom Gaines used to live in Lawsonville, and is still living in Culpeper County. I'll write him for information. On account of his connection with our Spanish schemes he can be trusted to mention my letter to no one. I'll write him immediately, and, while waiting his reply, I'll hover about Oaklands as much as possible, and try to ascertain the date of the Logan-Pepper alliance; and at the same time make another effort to recover possession of Sebastian's letter and that dangerous little specimen of forgery." The postal system of our country was a slow business in that day and time; but, in due course, Drane had Gaines' reply. From this he learned that a certain old tombstone in the Lawsonville graveyard bore this inscription: MARY BELLE HOLLIS PAGE born Feb'y 16th, 1758 died Aug. 21st, 1782. Other information contained in Gaines' letter was this, Mrs. Page had not died at Lawsonville, notwithstanding the tablet erected there to her memory. She had married Marshall Page in October, 1781, and she and her husband and the little Abner had migrated to Kentucky. Late in the next year, a brother of Marshall Page, who had accompanied them to Kentucky, returned to Lawsonville with the little boy, Abner Logan, and the intelligence that Marshall Page had been killed by Indians, and that Mary Page had died at Bryan's Station. The child had been committed to the care of Mrs. Page's relations in Lawsonville, the Dudleys, who had adopted him. Drane's informant also wrote that it had always been the impression with the people of Lawsonville that Mary Hollis had not been legally married to Abner's father, but that she had been entrapped into a form of marriage with John Logan at a time when he had a wife still living. "By the heavens above, this is the strangest affair that ever came within my ken!" said James Drane after reading Gaines' letter. "Why, I verily believe that the dainty schoolmaster is a bastard; and, what is more, that he has no claim to the Hite fortune. He certainly has not, if my surmises concerning that half-forgotten episode of that hamlet in the Cumberland Mountains be correct."