"Well," said he, "if you had committed a murder, and I had told you

your crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast."

"It is a large sum--don't you think there is a mistake?"

"No mistake at all."

"Perhaps you have read the figures wrong--it may be two thousand!"

"It is written in letters, not figures,--twenty thousand."

I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical

powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions

for a hundred. Mr. Rivers rose now and put his cloak on.

"If it were not such a very wild night," he said, "I would send

Hannah down to keep you company: you look too desperately miserable

to be left alone. But Hannah, poor woman! could not stride the

drifts so well as I: her legs are not quite so long: so I must

e'en leave you to your sorrows. Good-night."

He was lifting the latch: a sudden thought occurred to me. "Stop

one minute!" I cried.

"Well?"

"It puzzles me to know why Mr. Briggs wrote to you about me; or how

he knew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an out-of-the-

way place, had the power to aid in my discovery."

"Oh! I am a clergyman," he said; "and the clergy are often appealed

to about odd matters." Again the latch rattled.

"No; that does not satisfy me!" I exclaimed: and indeed there was

something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of

allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever.

"It is a very strange piece of business," I added; "I must know more

about it."

"Another time."

"No; to-night!--to-night!" and as he turned from the door, I placed

myself between it and him. He looked rather embarrassed.

"You certainly shall not go till you have told me all," I said.

"I would rather not just now."

"You shall!--you must!"

"I would rather Diana or Mary informed you."

Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax:

gratified it must be, and that without delay; and I told him so.

"But I apprised you that I was a hard man," said he, "difficult to

persuade."

"And I am a hard woman,--impossible to put off."

"And then," he pursued, "I am cold: no fervour infects me."




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