extenuating fact.

"Among your own folks, eh? White Violet and the rest, eh? But SHE'S not
in it?"

No reply.

"Hand me over that package. I'll give it back to you again."

The boy handed it to Mr. Hamlin. He read the letter, and found the
inclosure contained a twenty-dollar gold-piece. A half-supercilious
smile passed over his face at this revelation of the inadequate
emoluments of literature and the trifling inducements to crime. Indeed,
I fear the affair began to take a less serious moral complexion in his
eyes.

"Then White Violet--your sister Cynthia, you know," continued Mr.
Hamlin, in easy parenthesis--"wrote for this?" holding the coin
contemplatively in his fingers, "and you calculated to nab it yourself?"

The quick searching glance with which Bob received the name of his
sister, Mr. Hamlin attributed only to his natural surprise that
this stranger should be on such familiar terms with her; but the boy
responded immediately and bluntly:--

"No! SHE didn't write for it. She didn't want nobody to know who she
was. Nobody wrote for it but me. Nobody KNEW FOLKS WAS PAID FOR PO'TRY
BUT ME. I found it out from a feller. I wrote for it. I wasn't goin' to
let that skunk of an editor have it himself!"