'Do you want anything, brother?' said Hannah, hastening into the room.

'Go up into my bedroom, sister, and in the left-hand pigeon-hole in the
bureau you'll see a little flat tissue-paper parcel. Bring it me. It's
marked J.S.'

'Yes, brother,' and she departed.

'You said as your father had told your sister as he never got no more
than two hundred a year from th' partnership after he retired.'

'Yes,' Twemlow replied. 'That's what she wrote me. In fact she sent me
the old chap's letter to read. So I reckoned it cost him most all he got
to live.'

'Well,' the old man said, and Hannah returned with the parcel, which he
carefully unwrapped. 'That'll do, sister.' Hannah disappeared. 'Sithee!'
He mysteriously drew Arthur's attention to a little green book whose
cover still showed traces of mud and water.

'And what's this?' Twemlow asked with assumed lightness.

Meshach gave him the history of his adventure at the fire, and then
laboriously displayed and expounded the contents of the book, peering
into the yellow pages through the steel-rimmed spectacles which he had
put on for the purpose.

'And you've kept it all this time?' said Twemlow.

'I've kept it,' answered the old man grimly, and Twemlow felt that that