he showed her before he fastened it up with
the others, Kitty?"

"I did see it, indade, Mr. Gridley, and it's the truth I'm tellin' ye."

"Did you happen to notice anything about it, Kitty?"

"I did, indade, Mr. Gridley. It was a longish kind of a pauper, and
there was some blotches of ink on the back of it,--an' they looked like a
face without any mouth, for, says I, there's two spots for the eyes, says
I, and there's a spot for the nose, says I, and there's niver a spot for
the mouth, says I."

This was the substance of what Master Byles Gridley got out of Kitty
Fagan. It was enough, yes, it was too much. There was some deep-laid
plot between Murray Bradshaw and Cynthia Badlam, involving the interests
of some of the persons connected with the late Malachi Withers; for that
the paper described by Kitty was the same that he had seen the young man
conceal in the Corpus Juris Civilis, it was impossible to doubt. If it
had been a single spot an the back of it, or two, he might have doubted.
But three large spots "blotches" she had called them, disposed thus
*.* --would not have happened to be on two different papers, in all human
probability.

After grave consultation of all his mental faculties in committee of the
whole, he arrived at the following conclusion,--that Miss Cynthia Badlam
was the depositary of a secret involving interests which he felt it his
business to defend, and of a document which was fraudulently withheld and
meant to be used for some unfair purpose. And most assuredly, Master
Gridley said to himself, he held a master-key, which, just so certainly
as he could make up his mind to use it, would open any secret in the
keeping of Miss Cynthia Badlam.

He proceeded, therefore, without delay, to get ready for a visit to that
lady at The Poplars. He meant to go thoroughly armed, for he was a very
provident old gentleman. His weapons were not exactly of the kind which
a housebreaker would provide himself with, but of a somewhat peculiar
nature.

Weapon number one was a slip of paper with a date and a few words written
upon it. "I think this will fetch the document," he said to himself, "if
it comes to the worst. Not if I can help it,--not if I can help it. But
if I cannot get at the heart of this thing otherwise, why, I must come to
this. Poor woman!--Poor woman!"

Weapon number two was a small phial containing spirits of hartshorn, sal
volatile, very strong, that would stab through the nos