orresponds
with the one concealed in the sack; and if that shall prove to
be so--and it undoubtedly 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!
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