e bell,
and Morris, going timorously to the door, received from the hands of a
commissionaire a letter addressed in the hand of Michael. Its contents
ran as follows:

MORRIS FINSBURY, if this should meet the eye of, he will hear of
SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE at my office, in Chancery Lane, at 10 A.M.
tomorrow.

MICHAEL FINSBURY

So utter was Morris's subjection that he did not wait to be asked, but
handed the note to John as soon as he had glanced at it himself.

'That's the way to write a letter,' cried John. 'Nobody but Michael
could have written that.'

And Morris did not even claim the credit of priority.

CHAPTER XVI. Final Adjustment of the Leather Business

Finsbury brothers were ushered, at ten the next morning, into a large
apartment in Michael's office; the Great Vance, somewhat restored from
yesterday's exhaustion, but with one foot in a slipper; Morris, not
positively damaged, but a man ten years older than he who had left
Bournemouth eight days before, his face ploughed full of anxious
wrinkles, his dark hair liberally grizzled at the temples.

Three persons were seated at a table to receive them: Michael in
the midst, Gideon Forsyth on his right hand, on his left an ancient
gentleman with spectacles and silver hair. 'By Jingo, it's Uncle Joe!'
cried John.

But Morris approached his uncle with a pale countenance and glittering
eyes.

'I'll tell you what you did!' he cried. 'You absconded!'

'Good morning, Morris Finsbury,' returned Joseph, with no less asperity;
'you are looking seriously ill.'

'No use making trouble now,' remarked Michael. 'Look the facts in the
face. Your uncle, as you see, was not so much as shaken in the accident;
a man of your humane disposition ought to be delighted.'

'Then, if that's so,' Morris broke forth, 'how about the body? You don't
mean to insinuate that thing I schemed and sweated for, and colported
with my own hands, was the body of a total stranger?'

'O no, we can't go as far as that,' said Michael soothingly; 'you may
have met him at the club.'

Morris fell into a chair. 'I would have found it out if it had come to
the house,' he complained. 'And why didn't it? why did it go to Pitman?
what right had Pitman to open it?'

'If you come to that, Morris, what have you done with the colossal
Hercules?' asked Michael.

'He went through it with the meat-axe,' said John. 'It's all in
spillikins in the back garden.'

'Well, there's one thing,' snap