inted at it, so that one might have thought he was
calling attention to a stain upon it. He dropped his finger slowly,
maintaining his reproachful glare. Then suddenly:--"Did you invellop the
damned thing yourself?"

She answered tremulously:--"I wrote it in this room at this table, where
you sit, and put it in its invellop, and stuck it to, firm. And I put
back the blotting-book where I took it from, not to tell-tale...."

He interrupted her roughly. "Got the cursed thing there? _Where_ did you
take it from?... Oh--_that's_ your blotting-book, is it? Hand it over!"
She had produced it from the table-drawer close at hand, and gave it to
him without knowing why he asked for it.

There is no need to connect his promptness to catch a clue to a forgery
with his parentage. The clue is too simple--the spelling-book lore of
the spy's infancy. The convict pulled out the top sheet of
blotting-paper, and reversed it against the light. The second line of
the letter was clear, and ended "now not." The "not" might, however,
have been erased independently--probably would have been. But how about
the end of the fourth line, also clear, with the word "run" on an oasis
of clean paper, and nothing after it. That "no" in the letter was not
the work of its writer.

"I put it in its invellop, Daverill, and not a soul see inside that
letter from me till you...."

"How do you know that?" He paused, reflecting. "It wasn't Juliar. She'd
got no ink." This man was clever enough to outwit Scotland Yard, with an
offer of fifty pounds for his capture, but fell easily to the cunning of
a woman, roused by jealousy. It wasn't Julia, clearly? "Who had hold of
the letter, between you and her?" said he, quite off the right scent.

"Only young Micky Ragstroar...."

"There we've got it!" The man pounced. "Only that young offender and the
Police. That was good for half a sov. for him.... Don't see what I mean?
I'll tell you. _He_ delivered your letter all right, after they'd run
their eyes over it. I'll remember _him_, one day!" A word in this is not
the one Daverill used, and his adjective is twice omitted. Aunt M'riar's
puzzled face produced a more temperate explanation, to the effect that
Micky had carried the letter to a "tec," or detective, who had "got at
him," and that the letter had been tampered with at the police-station.

"I wouldn't believe it of Micky, and I don't," said Aunt M'riar. "The
boy's a good boy at heart, and no tale-bearer." S