the law, Mr. Frank, has convinced me that if everybody burned everybody
else's letters, half the courts of justice in this country might shut
up shop. Do you happen to know whether the letter we are now speaking of
contained anything like an avowal or confession of the forgery?"

"Of course it did," says he. "Could the writer express his contrition
properly without making some such confession?"

"Quite easy, if he had been a lawyer," says I. "But never mind that; I'm
going to make a guess--a desperate guess, mind. Should I be altogether
in error if I thought that this letter had been stolen; and that the
fingers of Mr. Davager, of suspicious commercial celebrity, might
possibly be the fingers which took it?"

"That is exactly what I wanted to make you understand," cried Mr. Frank.

"How did he communicate the interesting fact of the theft to you?"

"He has not ventured into my presence. The scoundrel actually had the
audacity--"

"Aha!" says I. "The young lady herself! Sharp practitioner, Mr.
Davager."

"Early this morning, when she was walking alone in the shrubbery," Mr.
Frank goes on, "he had the assurance to approach her, and to say that
he had been watching his opportunity of getting a private interview
for days past. He then showed her--actually showed her--her unfortunate
father's letter; put into her hands another letter directed to me;
bowed, and walked off; leaving her half dead with astonishment and
terror. If I had only happened to be there at the time!" says Mr. Frank,
shaking his fist murderously in the air, by way of a finish.

"It's the greatest luck in the world that you were not," says I. "Have
you got that other letter?"

He handed it to me. It was so remarkably humorous and short, that I
remember every word of it at this distance of time. It began in this
way:

_"To Francis Gatliffe, Esq., Jun._

"SIR--I have an extremely curious autograph letter to sell. The price is
a five-hundred-pound note. The young lady to whom you are to be married
on Wednesday will inform you of the nature of the letter, and the
genuineness of the autograph. If you refuse to deal, I shall send a copy
to the local paper, and shall wait on your highly-respected father with
the original curiosity, on the afternoon of Tuesday next. Having come
down here on family business, I have put up at the family hotel--being
to be heard of at the Gatliffe Arms. Your very obedient servant, ALFRED
DAVAGER."

"A clever fellow tha