ry limited nature, I took care not to give it to
him till he had produced the letters. On finding that I was really
prepared to give him his price, he went to an old-fashioned bureau, and
opened one of those secret recesses which cannot for three minutes
remain a secret to any investigator possessed of a tolerably accurate
eye or a three-foot rule. From this hiding-place--which he evidently
considered a triumph of mechanical art, worthy the cabinet of a
D'Argenson or a Fouche--he produced a packet of faded yellow letters,
about which there lurked a faint odour of dried rose-leaves and
lavender, which seemed the very perfume of the past.

When my reverend friend had laid the packet on the table within reach
of my hand, and not till then, I gave him the bank-notes. His fat old
fingers closed upon them greedily, and his fishy old eyes were
illumined by a faint glimmer which I believe nothing but bank-notes
could have kindled in them.

After having assured himself that they were genuine acknowledgments of
indebtedness on the part of the old lady in Thread-needle-street, and
not the base simulacra of Birmingham at five-and-twenty shillings a
dozen--thirteen as twelve--Mr. Goodge obligingly consented to sign a
simple form of receipt which I had drawn up for the satisfaction of my
principal.

"I think you said there were forty-odd letters," I remarked, before I
proceeded to count the documents in the presence of Mr. Goodge.

That gentleman looked at me with an air of astonishment, which, had I
not known him to be the most consummate of hypocrites, would have
seemed to be simplicity itself.

"I said from thirty to forty," he exclaimed; "I never said there were
forty-odd letters."

I looked at him and he looked at me. His face told me plainly enough
that he was trying to deceive me, and my face told him plainly enough
that he had no chance of succeeding in that attempt. Whether he was
keeping back some of the letters with a view to extorting more money
from me hereafter, or whether he was keeping them with the idea of
making a better bargain with somebody else, I could not tell; but of
the main fact I was certain--he had cheated me.

I untied the red tape which held the letters together. Yes, there was a
piece of circumstantial evidence which might have helped to convict my
friend had he been on his trial in a criminal court. The red tape bore
the mark of the place in which it had been tied for half a century; and
a lit