ily checked her.

'Get me some hot water, I tell you, and go to bed yourself. What are you
doing up at this hour?'

He went to business at the usual time next morning, and it seemed as if
the worst had blown over; at home he was sullen, but not violent.

The third day after his return, on entering his office at the mill, he
found Hood taking down one of a row of old ledgers which stood there
upon a shelf.

'What are you doing?' he asked abruptly, at the same time turning his
back upon the clerk.

Hood explained that he was under the necessity of searching through the
accounts for several years, to throw light upon a certain transaction
which was giving trouble.

'All right,' was the reply, as Dagworthy took his keys out to open his
desk.

A quarter of an hour later, he entered the room where Hood was busy over
the ledger. A second clerk was seated there, and him Dagworthy summoned
to the office, where he had need of him. Presently Hood came to replace
the ledger he had examined, and took away the succeeding volume. A few
minutes later Dagworthy said to the clerk who sat with him--

'I shall have to go away for an hour or so. I'm expecting a telegram
from Legge Brothers; if it doesn't come before twelve o'clock, you or
Hood must go to Hebsworth. It had better be Hood; you finish what you're
at. If there's no telegram, he must take the twelve-thirteen, and give
this note here to Mr. Andrew Legge; there'll be an answer. Mind you see
to this.'

At the moment when Dagworthy's tread sounded on the stairs, Mr. Hood was
on the point of making a singular discovery. In turning a page of the
ledger, he came upon an envelope, old and yellow, which had evidently
been shut up in the hook for several years; it was without address and
unsealed. He was going to lay it aside, when his fingers told him that
it contained something; the enclosure proved to be a ten-pound note,
also old and patched together in the manner of notes that have been sent
half at a time.

'Now I wonder how that got left there?' Hood mused. 'There's been rare
searching for that, I'll be bound. Here's something to put our friend
into a better temper.'

He turned the note over once or twice, tried in vain to decipher a
scribbled endorsement, then restored it to the envelope. With the letter
in his hand, he went to the office.

'Mr. Dagworthy out?' he asked of his fellow-clerk on looking round.

The clerk was a facetious youth. He rose from his seat,