"Well, what are we going to do now?" I nervously asked of Mr. Edgerton, speaking for the first time, and repeating the doctor's words of a few minutes before.
The lawyer fumbled in his pockets and drew forth the miniature and the paper he had taken from the desk. I remembered having noticed also that the doctor had slipped the coins in his pocket.
"This is all we have to go by," he replied. "Lord only knows what you've lost, Master Hurdiss. Oh, confound the thought that made me light the fire!" he added, kicking and pawing at the soaked ground like an angry bull.
Well, to make a short story of a long one, we watched the house burn down to a mass of smouldering heated ashes, and then we started to drive back without speaking. On the return we met a number of men on foot and horseback, who had sighted the conflagration from the cross-roads and were coming down the lane, but it was too late to do anything, and in a few words we explained what had happened. That night we spent at the tavern, and the next day we returned to Marshwood, followed by many curious persons. We dug in the still warm ruins, and there, to show the heat of the fire, we discovered nothing of the strong-box but the hinges, melted out of shape, and two or three small bits of metal as large as bullets that had once been gold pieces. These were turned over to me as being my lawful possessions, and they made, with what the doctor had saved and the miniature and the paper, my sole inheritance. So now begins the time I must act for myself.
On the twelfth day of November, 1811, my new life began. But before I go on I should explain that on the outside of the paper which the lawyer had saved, and which I had deciphered on the day of the burning of Marshwood House (and which has staid in my mind, as I transcribed it also), an address had been found. In some way it had been overlooked upon the first reading. It was important, however, as it gave the address of my uncle, Monsieur Henri Amedee Lovalle de Brienne, as Miller's Falls, near Stonington, Connecticut.
The lawyer had written to this place a letter at some length, but we had waited in vain for a reply; letters often went astray in those days, and in some way, as I afterwards discovered, this one was most likely lost. In the mean time I had become a member of Mr. Edgerton's family. I was treated with kindness, but of course it was not expected of him to take charge of my maintenance, and the proposition for a change came from my own lips. In walking along the water-front one day I discovered that a little brig, the _Minetta_, was about to sail for Stonington, and I proposed to Mr. Edgerton to take passage in her and search out my relative, if he were living.