red that they had
lost the battle, and they have abandoned the field."

"What do I see here?" cried the doctor, as he picked up a half-burned
sheet of paper from the mass. "This is my own writing my application
to the Patent Office, when I was prosecuting my discovery of corrugated
steel! When and how could it have come here?"

"Who can 'My dear father' be?" asked Quackinboss, examining a letter
which he had lifted from the floor. "Oh, here's his name: 'Captain
Nicholas Holmes'--"

"Nick Holmes!" exclaimed the doctor; "the fellow who stole my invention,
and threw me into a madhouse! What of him? Who writes to him as 'dear
father'?"

"Our widow, no less," said the Colonel. "It is a few lines to say she is
just setting out for Florence, and will be with him within the week."

"And this scoundrel was her father!" muttered the old doctor. "Only
think of all the scores that we should have had to settle if we had
had the luck to be here an hour ago! I thrashed him once in the public
streets, it's true, but we are far from being quits yet Come, let's lose
no time, but after them at once."

Alfred made no reply, but turned a look on Quackinboss, as thongh to
bespeak his interference.

"Well, sir," said the Colonel, slowly, "so long as the pursuit involved
a something to find out, no man was hotter arter it than I was; but now
that we know all, that we have baffled our adversaries and beaten 'em, I
ain't a-goin' to distress myself for a mere vengeance."

"Which means that these people are to go at large, free to practise
their knaveries on others, and carry into other families the misery we
have seen them inflict here. Is that your meaning?" asked the doctor,
angrily.

"I can't tell what they are a-goin' to do hereafter, nor, maybe, can you
either, sir. It may be, that with changed hearts they 'll try another
way of livin'; it may be that they 'll see roguery ain't the best
thing; it may be--who's to say how?--that all they have gone through
of trouble and care and anxiety has made them long since sick of such
a wearisome existence, and that, though not very strong in virtue, they
are right glad to be out of the pains of vice, whatever and wherever
they may be. At all events, Shaver Quackinboss has done with 'em, and if
it was only a-goin' the length of the garden to take them this minute, I
'd jest say, 'No, tell 'em to slope off, and leave me alone.'"

"Let me tell you, sir, these are not your home maxims, and, for