ubtedly will--this sack of gold belongs to a fellow-citizen who
will henceforth stand before the nation as the symbol of the special
virtue which has made our town famous throughout the land--Mr. Billson!"

The house had gotten itself all ready to burst into the proper tornado of
applause; but instead of doing it, it seemed stricken with a paralysis;
there was a deep hush for a moment or two, then a wave of whispered
murmurs swept the place--of about this tenor: "_Billson_! oh, come, this
is _too_ thin! Twenty dollars to a stranger--or _anybody_--_Billson_!
Tell it to the marines!" And now at this point the house caught its
breath all of a sudden in a new access of astonishment, for it discovered
that whereas in one part of the hall Deacon Billson was standing up with
his head weekly bowed, in another part of it Lawyer Wilson was doing the
same. There was a wondering silence now for a while. Everybody was
puzzled, and nineteen couples were surprised and indignant.

Billson and Wilson turned and stared at each other. Billson asked,
bitingly:

"Why do _you_ rise, Mr. Wilson?"

"Because I have a right to. Perhaps you will be good enough to explain
to the house why _you_ rise."

"With great pleasure. Because I wrote that paper."

"It is an impudent falsity! I wrote it myself."

It was Burgess's turn to be paralysed. He stood looking vacantly at
first one of the men and then the other, and did not seem to know what to
do. The house was stupefied. Lawyer Wilson spoke up now, and said:

"I ask the Chair to read the name signed to that paper."

That brought the Chair to itself, and it read out the name:

"John Wharton _Billson_."

"There!" shouted Billson, "what have you got to say for yourself now? And
what kind of apology are you going to make to me and to this insulted
house for the imposture which you have attempted to play here?"

"No apologies are due, sir; and as for the rest of it, I publicly charge
you with pilfering my note from Mr. Burgess and substituting a copy of it
signed with your own name. There is no other way by which you could have
gotten hold of the test-remark; I alone, of living men, possessed the
secret of its wording."

There was likely to be a scandalous state of things if this went on;
everybody noticed with distress that the shorthand scribes were
scribbling like mad; many people were crying "Chair, chair! Order!
order!" Burgess rapped with his gavel, and said:

"Let us