Ruby's Reward — page 5: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Buch a8 pigeon-holes, closets, secrelidrawers, and sliding- Panels, for the concealment ond recepLion of important documents and papers. It was well éd with things of this sort, and, hour after hour, Edmund Carpenter sat before it, never Taking &. sound that could be heard outside the room, Due seperti most critically every thing the desk con- tained. Pigeon-holes were empuad ond thetr contents looked over; drawer after drawer unlocked nnd carefully lo- spected ; secret places were curlously peered into, but evidently without accomplshing the purpose which the young man had In view, for he wore afrowning brow and his whole fnee, which was naturally of a land- some cast, was rendered extremelt nupleasant by the almost flerce expression that pervadad IL, Finally @ little closet was all thet remained to be ex- amlried, and this was locked. Bub there was a tiny key, attached to tha bunch be- longing Lo the desk, which fitted tt, and 1f was the worle of butia moment to unlock it and expose 4 pile of legal- looking docnments neatly stowed within. Edmund Carpenter moved the lamp nearer—somehow he hesitated to take those papers out as he had the others—and, 28 the Ught fell upon the one lying ab the top, he read tio words that made tim sturt aud grow suddenly pale. “Lnsr WIL? was all that he sasy, though there was sormetbing else written beneath tt, but those words were euough f0 s0b every drop of bload In his velns bolling with anger, while his white teeth came together with a viclous suup that betrayed tha displeasure which the knowledge that his father had fnade a will cased him. “T was afrald of 1t—I Was almost sure of It," he growled, under his breath, and then, leaning his head on his hand, he sat for a long time absorbed In deep thought. But, ab length, he aroused himself, and turned his at- tentlon again to the contents of fue closet. He slipped bis ee under the obnoxious document ns 80 disturbed him, and peered at the one under- neath. It proved to be a mortgage. Lifting one end of this. lkewlse, and one after another of those remaining, he ran through the enttre lot, all of which were elther mortgages, bonds, or Insurance apers, a E Then, with a sigh, and an angry jerk of his hand, as he realized that the svealth which those ryaluable doct- ments represented, wis donbtless desttosd to ba shared with one whom he had always desplsed, of whom’ he had always been jealous, be Jet them settle back Into thelr place; but In so doing the top one—that one Jabeled "Last W1l"—slipped suddenly buckwa | oud Dt, comichoolss