."

"What's that?" cried the hunchback, coming out from under the Bay Eagle.
He wore a long blue coat that dragged the ground, the sleeves rolled up
above his wrists, a coat that Roy had fished out of a box in the loft of
his tavern and hesitated over, because on an evening in his youthful
heyday, he had gone in that coat to make a bride of a certain Mathilda,
and the said Mathilda at the final moment did most stubbornly refuse.
The coat had brass buttons, a plenteous pitting of moth-holes, and a
braided collar.

Jud went on without noticing the interruption. "The letter that Twiggs
brought was a-layin' on the mantelpiece, tore open. Quiller could a
looked just as easy as not, an' a found out just what it said, but he
edged off."

The hunchback turned around in his blue coat without disturbing the
swallowtails lying against his legs. "Is Jud right?" he said.

I nodded my head.

"An' you didn't look?"

Again I nodded.

"Quiller," cried Ump, "do you know how that way of talkin' started? The
devil was the daddy of it. He had his mouth crammed full of souls, an'
when they asked him if he wanted any more, he begun a-bobbin' his head
like that."

"It's every word the truth," said I. "There was the letter lying open,
with Cynthia's monogram on the envelope, and I could have looked."

"Why didn't you?" said Ump.

"High frollickin' notions," responded Jud. "I told him a hog couldn't
root with a silk nose."

The hunchback closed his hand and pressed his thumb up under his chin.
"High frollickin' notions," he said, "are all mighty purty to make
meetin'-house talk, but they're short horses when you try to ride 'em.
It all depends on where you're at. If you're settin' up to the Lord's
table, you must dip with your spoon, but if you're suppin' with the
devil, you can eat with your fingers."

I cast about for an excuse, like a lad under the smarting charge of
having said his prayers. "It wasn't any notion," said I; "Mr. Marsh came
back too quick."

"Why didn't you yank the paper, an' we'd a had it," said he.

"We have got it," said I, putting my hand in my breeches pocket and
drawing forth the letter. I stood deep in the oak leaves of the horses'
bedding. The light of the candle squeezing through the dirty glass sides
brought every log of the old stable into shadow.

Jud came out of El Mahdi's stall like something out of a hole. He wore a
rubber coat that had gone many years about the world, up and down, and
final