that we've lost so little.
It has been next to nothing. That has been my doing;--and that's
about all I can do."

"You must know whether he has used my money for his own purposes or
not."

"If you ask me, I think he has," said Mr. Musselboro.

"Then I'll go into it, and I'll find it out, and if it is so, as
sure as my name's Van Siever, I'll sew him up." Having uttered which
terrible threat, the old woman drew a chair to the table and seated
herself fairly down, as though she were determined to go through all
the books of the office before she quitted that room. Mrs. Van Siever
in her present habiliments was not a thing so terrible to look at as
she had been in her wiggeries at Mrs. Dobbs Broughton's dinner-table.
Her curls were laid aside altogether, and she wore simply a front
beneath her close bonnet,--and a very old front, too, which was not
loudly offensive because it told no lies. Her eyes were as bright,
and her little wizen face was as sharp, as ever; but the wizen face
and the bright eyes were not so much amiss as seen together with
the old dark brown silk dress which she now wore, as they had been
with the wiggeries and the evening finery. Even now, in her morning
costume, in her work-a-day business dress, as we may call it, she
looked to be very old,--so old that nobody could guess her age.
People attempting to guess would say that she must be at least over
eighty. And yet she was wiry, and strong, and nimble. It was not
because she was feeble that she was thought to be so old. They who so
judged of her were led to their opinion by the extreme thinness of
her face, and by the brightness of her eyes, joined to the depth of
the hollows in which they lay, and the red margin by which they were
surrounded. It was not really the fact that Mrs. Van Siever was so
very aged, for she had still some years to live before she would
reach eighty, but that she was such a weird old woman, so small, so
ghastly, and so ugly! "I'll sew him up, if he's been robbing me," she
said. "I will, indeed!" And she stretched out her hand to grab at the
ledger which Musselboro had been using.

"You won't understand anything from that," said he, pushing the book
over to her.

"You can explain it to me."

"That's all straight sailing, that is."

"And where does he keep the figures that ain't straight sailing?
That's the book I want to see."

"There is no such book."

"Look here, Gus,--if I find you deceiving me I'll throw you o