_any_ mail; wait till I tell you."

"It's already gone, sir."

"_Gone_?" It had the sound of an unspeakable disappointment in it.

"Yes, sir. Time-table for Brixton and all the towns beyond changed to-
day, sir--had to get the papers in twenty minutes earlier than common. I
had to rush; if I had been two minutes later--"

The men turned and walked slowly away, not waiting to hear the rest.
Neither of them spoke during ten minutes; then Cox said, in a vexed tone,

"What possessed you to be in such a hurry, _I_ can't make out."

The answer was humble enough:

"I see it now, but somehow I never thought, you know, until it was too
late. But the next time--"

"Next time be hanged! It won't come in a thousand years."

Then the friends separated without a good-night, and dragged themselves
home with the gait of mortally stricken men. At their homes their wives
sprang up with an eager "Well?"--then saw the answer with their eyes and
sank down sorrowing, without waiting for it to come in words. In both
houses a discussion followed of a heated sort--a new thing; there had
been discussions before, but not heated ones, not ungentle ones. The
discussions to-night were a sort of seeming plagiarisms of each other.
Mrs. Richards said:

"If you had only waited, Edward--if you had only stopped to think; but
no, you must run straight to the printing-office and spread it all over
the world."

"It _said_ publish it."

"That is nothing; it also said do it privately, if you liked. There,
now--is that true, or not?"

"Why, yes--yes, it is true; but when I thought what a stir it would make,
and what a compliment it was to Hadleyburg that a stranger should trust
it so--"

"Oh, certainly, I know all that; but if you had only stopped to think,
you would have seen that you _couldn't_ find the right man, because he is
in his grave, and hasn't left chick nor child nor relation behind him;
and as long as the money went to somebody that awfully needed it, and
nobody would be hurt by it, and--and--"

She broke down, crying. Her husband tried to think of some comforting
thing to say, and presently came out with this:

"But after all, Mary, it must be for the best--it must be; we know that.
And we must remember that it was so ordered--"

"Ordered! Oh, everything's _ordered_, when a person has to find some way
out when he has been stupid. Just the same, it was _ordered_ that the
money should come to us in this special way,