become almost necessary.

"So you think I did wrong, Monsieur Hogg?" she asked, after allowing
the professor to say all he had to say on the subject.

"Certainly, Dame Hansen."

"If you blame me for having engaged in rash speculations, and for
endangering the fortune of my children, you are perfectly right; but
if you blame me for having resorted to the means I did to free myself,
you are wrong. What have you to say in reply?"

"Nothing."

"But seriously, do you think that I ought to have refused the offer of
Sandgoist, who really offered fifteen thousand marks for a ticket that
is probably worth nothing; I ask you again, do you think I ought to
have refused it?"

"Yes and no, Dame Hansen."

"It can not be both yes and no, professor; it is no. Under different
circumstances, and if the future had appeared less threatening--though
that was my own fault, I admit--I should have upheld Hulda in her
refusal to part with the ticket she had received from Ole Kamp. But
when there was a certainty of being driven in a few days from the
house in which my husband died, and in which my children first saw
the light, I could not understand such a refusal, and you yourself,
Monsieur Hogg, had you been in my place, would certainly have acted as
I did."

"No, Dame Hansen, no!"

"What would you have done, then?"

"I would have done anything rather than sacrifice a ticket my daughter
had received under such circumstances."

"Do these circumstances, in your opinion, enhance the value of the
ticket?"

"No one can say."

"On the contrary, every one does know. This ticket is simply one that
has nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine
chances of losing against one of winning. Do you consider it any more
valuable because it was found in a bottle that was picked up at sea?"

Sylvius Hogg hardly knew what to say in reply to this straightforward
question, so he reverted to the sentimental side of the question by
remarking:

"The situation now seems to be briefly as follows: Ole Kamp, as the
ship went down, bequeathed to Hulda the sole earthly possession left
him, with the request that she should present it on the day of the
drawing, provided, of course, that the ticket reached her; and now
this ticket is no longer in Hulda's possession."

"If Ole Kamp had been here, he would not have hesitated to surrender
his ticket to Sandgoist," replied Dame Hansen.

"That is quite possible," replied Sylvius Hog