ain and again: then he held it in the flame of the lamp, and let
it slowly burn, until only a few scorched fragments remained. These he
folded in a small paper, and put into his pocket-book. Why he did this, he
could not tell, and wondered at himself for doing it. Then he walked the
room for an hour or two, revolving in his mind what he should say to
Mercy. His ideas arranged themselves concisely and clearly. He had been
stung by Mercy's letter into a frame of feeling hardly less inexorable
than her own. He said to himself, "She never truly loved me, or nothing
under heaven could make her believe me capable of a dishonesty;" and, in
midst of all his pain at this thought, he had an indignant resentment, as
if Mercy herself had been in some way actively responsible for all this
misery.

His letter was shorter than Mercy's. They were sad, strange letters to
have passed between lovers. Mercy's ran as follows:--

"MY DARLING STEPHEN,--Your letters have shocked me so deeply that I find
myself at a loss for words in which to reply. I cannot understand your
present position at all. I have waited all these days, hoping that some
new light would come to me, that I could see the whole thing differently;
but I cannot. On the contrary, each hour that I think of it (and I have
thought of nothing else since your second letter came) only makes my
conviction stronger. Darling, that money is Mrs. Jacobs's money, by every
moral right. You may be correct in your statement as to the legal rights
of the case. I take it for granted that you are. At any rate, I know
nothing about that; and I rest no argument upon it at all. But it is clear
as daylight to me that morally you are bound to give her the money.
Suppose you had had permission from her to make those changes in the
house, while you were still her tenant, and had found the money, then you
would have handed it to her unhesitatingly. Why? Because you would have
said, 'This woman's husband built this house. No one except his brother
who could possibly have deposited this money here has lived in the house.
One of those two men was the owner of that gold. In either case, she is
the only heir, and it is hers. I am sure you would have felt this, had we
chanced to discover the money on one of those winter nights you refer to.
Now in what has the moral obligation been changed by the fact that the
house has come into your hands? Not by ordinary sale, either; but simply
by foreclosure of a mortga