"Paul, they were; but they did not point out the writer, even. There was a note among them--a note soliciting a meeting with Marian, upon the very evening, and upon the very spot when and where the murder was committed! But that note contains nothing to indicate the identity of its author. There are, besides, a number of foreign letters written in French, and signed 'Thomas Truman,' no French name, by-the-bye, a circumstance which leads me to believe that it must have been an assumed one." "And those French letters give no indication of the writer, either?" "I am not sufficiently acquainted with that language to read it in manuscript, which, you know, is much more difficult than print. But I presume they point to nothing definitely, for my dear mother showed them to Mr. Willcoxen, who took the greatest interest in the discovery of the murderer, and he told her that those letters afforded not the slightest clue to the perpetrator of the crime, and that whoever might have been the assassin, it certainly could not have been the author of those letters. He wished to take them with him, but mother declined to give them up; she thought it would be disrespect to Marian's memory to give her private correspondence up to a stranger, and so she told him. He then said that of all men, certainly he had the least right to claim them, and so the matter rested. But mother always believed they held the key to the discovery of the guilty party; and afterward she left them to me, with the charge that I should never suffer them to pass from my possession until they had fulfilled their destiny of witnessing against the murderer--for whatever Mr. Willcoxen might think, mother felt convinced that the writer of those letters and the murderer of Marian was the same person." "Tell me more about those letters." "Dear Paul, I know nothing more about them; I told you that I was not sufficiently familiar with the French language to read them." "But it is strange that you never made yourself acquainted with their contents by getting some one else to read them for you." "Dear Paul, you know that I was a mere child when they first came into my possession, accompanied with the charge that I should never part with them until they had done their office. I felt bound by my promise, I was afraid of losing them, and of those persons that I could trust none knew French, except our brother, and he had already pronounced them irrelevant to the question. Besides, for many reasons, I was shy of intruding upon brother." "Does he know that you have the packet?" "I suppose he does not even know that."