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.
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