"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."