that they would present it to you. I loved your mother well, my child,
but had not enough property at the time to contend with your father.
Open the parcel in private, and be warned by its moral: Better is wilful
waist than woeful want of it."

It was the stay-lace by which Mrs. POTTS, from too great persistence in
drawing herself up proudly, had perished in her prime.

"Now come into the open air with me, and let us walk to Central Park,"
continued Mr. DIBBLE, shaking off his momentary fit of gloom, "I have
strange things to tell you both. I have to teach you, in justice to a
much-injured man, that we have, in our hearts, cruelly wronged that
excellent and devout Mr. BUMSTEAD, by suspecting him of a crime whereof
he is now proved innocent at least _I_ suspected him. To-morrow night we
must all be in Bumsteadville. I will tell you why as we walk."


CHAPTER XXVII.

SOLUTION.

In the darkness of a night made opaque by approaching showers, a man
stands under the low-drooping branches of the edge of a wood skirting
the cross-road leading down to Gospeler's Gulch.

"Not enough saved from the wreck even to buy the merciful rope that
should end all my humor and impecuniosity!" he mutters, over his folded
arms and heaving chest. "I have come to this out-of-the-way suburb to
end my miserable days, and not so much as one clothes-line have I seen
yet. There is the pond, however; I can jump into that, I suppose: but