"It's as heavy as lead! Don't tell me that's all blackberries! Ann Seabrook, what's in this bucket—rocks?"
"Look and see for yourself, mother," and Ann danced into the next room and collapsed jojdully into a chair beside her father. Mrs. Seabrook followed, bringing the can, which she had dislodged from the bucket of berries. Then Ann told her story. Next she flew for Mr. Randolph, a lawyer friend of her father; and when she got back to the house, accompanied by Mr. Randolph, several neighbors, scenting something unusual, had come in. So the story was told again, after which the lid of the can was pried off with a hot poker, and Ann took from it a sealed envelope addressed to "The Person Finding this Can." Under the envelope was a chamois-skin bag, well filled with golden eagles and banknotes. The envelope contained a letter which ran as follows:
Having no kindred, and knowing that I am ill of an incurable disease, I take this means of disposing of my property.
It is my wish that the money in this can shall be divided into two equal portions, one portion to goto the Highville Hospital, the other to the finder of the can.
I am not mentally unbalanced, as some will imagine, but do this because I prefer to leave to chance that which I cannot decide for myself. There are, doubtless, some needy persons in this neighborhood, but I have no means of finding out who they are; it pleases me to think that some such person will find this, perhaps by his own ingenuity in following up the clues I have prepared. I know it is possible that a dishonest person may find it and appropriate the whole of the contents to himself, but I have faith in the integrity of the average human being, and take the risk.
Ezra Pool.
Witnesses:
Martha Merriweather,
Ellen Burke.
Thus it came about that many persons were made comfortable and happy by the contents of the old rusty can. For, though it did not contain a fortune, in the general acceptation of the term, it was sufficient to put the hospital on an independent footing, to enable Mr. Seabrook to pay off his indebtedness and buy the Hill Farm, and to give Ann an education.
Perhaps the person most disconcerted by the turn of events was Mrs. Merriweather, who bemoaned her own shortsightedness in not "smelling a mouse" on the occasion, some weeks before Mr. Pool's death, when he asked the signatures of herself and her handmaiden as witnesses to a "legal document".
