s. They met, panting, at the foot of the
printing-office stairs; by the night-light there they read each other's
face. Cox whispered:

"Nobody knows about this but us?"

The whispered answer was:

"Not a soul--on honour, not a soul!"

"If it isn't too late to--"

The men were starting up-stairs; at this moment they were overtaken by a
boy, and Cox asked,

"Is that you, Johnny?"

"Yes, sir."

"You needn't ship the early mail--nor 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 br