nger."

"It's perfectly true. I feel guilty and ashamed. And you?"

"I'm past it. Let us make a pallet here; we've got to stand watch till
the bank vault opens in the morning and admits the sack... Oh dear, oh
dear--if we hadn't made the mistake!"

The pallet was made, and Mary said:

"The open sesame--what could it have been? I do wonder what that remark
could have been. But come; we will get to bed now."

"And sleep?"

"No; think."

"Yes; think."

By this time the Coxes too had completed their spat and their
reconciliation, and were turning in--to think, to think, and toss, and
fret, and worry over what the remark could possibly have been which
Goodson made to the stranded derelict; that golden remark; that remark
worth forty thousand dollars, cash.

The reason that the village telegraph-office was open later than
usual that night was this: The foreman of Cox's paper was the local
representative of the Associated Press. One might say its honorary
representative, for it wasn't four times a year that he could furnish
thirty words that would be accepted. But this time it was different. His
despatch stating what he had caught got an instant answer:

"Send the whole thing--all the details--twelve hundred words."

A colossal order! The foreman filled the bill; and he was the proudest
man in the State. By breakfast-time the next morning the name of
Hadleyburg the Incorruptible was on every lip in America, from Montreal
to the Gulf, from the glaciers of Alaska to the orange-groves of
Florida; and millions and millions of people were discussing the
stranger and his money-sack, and wondering if the right man would be
found, and hoping some more news about the matter would come soon--right
away.

II

Hadleyburg village woke up world-celebrated--astonished--happy--vain.
Vain beyond imagination. Its nineteen principal citizens and their wives
went about shaking hands with each other, and beaming, and smiling,
and congratulating, and saying THIS thing adds a new word to the
dictionary--HADLEYBURG, synonym for INCORRUPTIBLE--destined to live in
dictionaries for ever! And the minor and unimportant citizens and their
wives went around acting in much the same way. Everybody ran to the bank
to see the gold-sack; and before noon grieved and envious crowds began
to flock in from Brixton and all neighbouring towns; and that afternoon
and next day reporters began to arrive from everywhere to verify the
sack and it