THE LETTER
Mr Greyquill's office was in High Street. He used two rooms for his
professional affairs, and the rest of the house, which was a small one,
he lived in. He was an attorney, and a flourishing one: so mean that
his name had passed into a proverb, but honourable in his dishonourable
doings, so that though every man agreed that Greyquill was a scoundrel,
all held that he kept well within the lines of his villainy, and that
he was unimpeachable outside the prescribed and understood rules of his
roguery.
Two mornings following the day on which Mr Short had proposed Mr
Lawrence's health, old Mr Greyquill rose from his chair at his office
table, and said to his clerk in the brown wig, who sat within eyeshot
at another table in the adjacent room, that he was going to collect his
rents at Greyquill's Buildings, and that he would not be back before
half-past twelve. He never looked so white as he did this morning. His
white hair seemed to rest like a cloud upon his head and shoulders. His
eyebrows bore so strong a resemblance to white mice that no one could
have overlooked the similitude, particularly as each eyebrow flourished
over the bridge of the nose a few little dark hairs which resembled
tails. His waistcoat was white, not having come from the wash above
three days, and his stockings were white.
He left his house and walked down the road which led to the bridge, but
instead of crossing the bridge he descended a short flight of steps
abreast of the flight that led to the wharves. These steps conducted
the passenger to the river-side walk that went up the banks of the
stream, and a very sweet walk it was this morning. The bright river
trembled in prisms and gems under the pleasant breathing of the wind,
which was aromatic with the odours it culled in its flight over the
country, the birds sang gaily with here and there a deep flute-like
note. It was a morning lovely and delightful with the virginal spirit
of spring, when all creation seems new, when no note in the trees, no
sweetness in the air, no bloom or flash of white on the bough, no timid
wayside flower that seems to have sprung into being since yester eve
and glances at you coyly from its little wayside bower, but delights
the senses as a beautiful surprise, as a something remembered but never
so fresh, so appealing.
A bend of the river's path shut out the view of Old Harbour Town and
the Harbour, and just when Mr Greyquill reached this turn, he saw
Mr Lawrence coming along the road, having manifestly gained it by a
little bridge, some distance beyond which was another way, but rather
roundabout, of getting to Old Harbour from Sir William Lawrence's
cottage.
Mr Lawrence looked very well; his colour was fresh, his eyes carried
the light which nature intended them to take, but which his hand was
perpetually seeking to extinguish by draughts of strong liquors. He
had been extremely temperate for three days, and his resolution was
producing its fruits in his general appearance. It is indeed surprising
how short is the period asked for by Nature even from men who live
harder and drink harder than Mr Lawrence, to restore to them as much
of their healthy old good looks as in some cases makes them almost
irrecognisable.
"Good morning, Mr Lawrence," said Mr Greyquill, making the gentleman
a low bow. "I may take it that you're going to the ship which I am
pleased to hear Captain Acton has given you the command of."
"You are very kind, sir, to take an interest in my affairs," answered
Mr Lawrence with slight sarcasm.
"I think I have some reason, Mr Lawrence," answered Mr Greyquill,
drooping his head to one side, and looking at the other with a
confidential and familiar expression which was scarcely a smile, but
which teased the hot blood of Mr Lawrence as though the look masked an
insult. Mr Lawrence viewed him in silence.
"I may trust, at all events," continued the money-lender, "now that you
are in receipt of money--and if the terms have been correctly named to
me they speak very highly in favour of Captain Acton's generosity--that
you will give my debt your immediate attention, and that if you cannot
pay all, you will pay as much as I have a right to expect from the
amount you receive."
"You shall be paid, sir," said Mr Lawrence.
"It would be convenient to me if you would fix a day for the first
payment if you cannot pay the whole," said Mr Greyquill.
"I shall not be able to pay you anything this side my first command of
the _Minorca_. If I hand you the sum of twenty-five guineas after my
return, that is, when I am paid off by Captain Acton, I believe you
will not have much reason to complain, sir."
Mr Greyquill shrugged his shoulders.
"Twenty-five guineas is a very small proportion of three hundred
pounds," he exclaimed.
"It is not three hundred pounds, sir," answered Mr Lawrence, with the
countenance of a man who is resolved in his intention, but desires to
speak with prudence and good humour.
"But from my point of view it is three hundred pounds," cried Mr
Greyquill. "What is the good of money without interest? I enter in my
books the interest on my money as a part of my money, and if you tell
me I am not to speak of my interest when I speak of what is due to me,
what is my situation? How am I to live? The profit the butcher makes by
the sale of his carcasses is the interest upon his outlay; deprive him
of that and he will not sell you meat, because he could not afford to
do so."
"The butcher does not charge at your rate, Mr Greyquill," said Mr
Lawrence with a faint smile.
"I will not declare what the butcher charges!" cried Mr Greyquill,
a little warmly for so sleek a man. "But take my word, the British
tradesman, whether tinker, tailor, butcher, baker, and we'll throw in
grocer as we do not value rhymes, charges at rates which if reduced
from profit to interest and called by that aggressive term discount,
would represent every shopkeeper in the nation as big a scoundrel as
the most voracious of your money-lenders, sir."
He bowed as though to the applause of an audience, and looked the
better pleased with Mr Lawrence for having heard him.
"Well, Mr Greyquill, twenty-five guineas when I'm paid off on my return
home. I can say no more, and can promise no more."
"You speak like a gentleman to me in this matter, which you do not
often do when I refer to it, nor your father neither----"
"Sir William Lawrence has nothing to do with my affairs."
"Still, he might recognise my claim and your debt, and treat me perhaps
with the commiseration with which he would pity himself if he lost
three hundred pounds."
"You have not lost it, Mr Greyquill."
"No, sir, and from my conversation with you this morning I am satisfied
I shall receive every penny. I wish you a truly prosperous voyage and a
safe return home, and that the Frenchman won't be the means of dishing
more hopes than your own."
He made another of his bows, and Mr Lawrence saluting him with a
slight smile and a lifted hat, passed on.
Just at the bend of the road not ten paces from where they had been
standing, Mr Lawrence drew forth his pocket-handkerchief to blow his
nose, and with it there came out of his pocket and fell upon the road
unobserved by him, a large sheet of paper folded into four. Mr Lawrence
blew his nose and went round the corner, and the paper would have been
out of sight had he looked behind.
Old Greyquill, trudging on busy in thought with Mr Lawrence's debt,
was moved by some idea of the man to look behind him. Mr Lawrence had
disappeared. Quite discernible from where Greyquill stood was the
sheet of paper Lawrence had let fall. Old Greyquill stopped, peered,
reflected that it might be a letter that he himself had unconsciously
been toying with and had dropped, or that in some other way had let
fall from his pocket. He retraced the few steps that lay between and
picked it up, and proceeded with it in one hand, whilst with the other
he fumbled for his spectacle-case.
He immediately saw that it was a sheet of paper about the size of
foolscap, but somewhat squarer, of a bluish tint; it was provided
free of cost to the frequenters of the sailors' reading-room at "The
Swan." He well knew the paper, for many a letter written upon it had
he received. It was of a convenient size for those who used it, as
first of all it was ruled on one side, which enabled a man to steer
a straight course with his pen. The page was likewise so large as to
enable a man to write big, and few who used it could write small. It
also supplied plenty of space for erasures, whether of expression or
spelling, and this was useful. When folded into four and sealed or
wafered, the sheet became a letter which needed but the address to
qualify it for the post.
In the case of the sheet Mr Greyquill held, it had been folded to
resemble a letter, but it had not been made one; it bore no address,
and the communication started at once without the prefatorial "Dear
sir," or the like, and it closed without signature or initials. But
Mr Greyquill immediately saw that the handwriting in pencil was
Mr Lawrence's, and that the document must have fallen from that
gentleman's pocket just now when they parted.
We have seen that the frame which bounded Mr Greyquill's portrait of
honour was large. Most men recognising the handwriting would have
denied themselves the right of reading this letter, because they had
found it lying in a public roadway, for two reasons: the handwriting
was known to them, and the recent presence of the writer where that
letter was found would have identified it as its owner's business in no
wise to be intruded on by a man of honour.
But this sort of argument did not fall within the frame of Mr
Greyquill's picture of integrity. It was a letter lying ready for
anybody's hand in a public way; next, it was not addressed; third, it
was not signed; and fourth, though the contents were apparently in
Mr Lawrence's handwriting, yet some people did write, as Greyquill
knew, so wonderfully alike that there was no reason to conclude
without strong internal evidence that the letter Mr Greyquill held was
written by Mr Lawrence. Whatever else it was, it was certainly a draft
roughly pencilled of a letter that had been copied in ink and no doubt
despatched. Here and there was an erasure in ink, which proved that it
had been copied in ink and corrected in certain places by the pen that
was transcribing it. He had not proceeded far when his eyebrows, which,
as we have heard, inimitably expressed the aspect of two white mice,
arched their backs to an extraordinary degree as though in imitation of
a cat when enraged; his mouth took on the posture of a whistle; with
his eyes rooted to the sheet he stopped and scratched his head until
he nearly tumbled his hat into the road.
Just then certain large white-bosomed April clouds which had been
leisurely sailing up from over the sea began to discharge some rain,
and one shower was so smart that Greyquill took refuge in a small
wayside barn, where, until the rain ceased he had the opportunity of
reading the letter several times.
His astonishment was unaffected and amazing; with the habit of senility
he kept on muttering to himself aloud whilst he perused and re-perused
the letter.
"Is it possible! Is this the officer and the gentleman! Could an egg
so full of criminal matter find any black fowl willing to hatch it
in so pleasing a nest! And I am called an old scamp because I part
with my honestly earned money for a consideration which is trifling
in comparison with the benefit I confer, the help that I am to the
man in need. This will require thought. I shall need to think pretty
considerably before I decide. Meanwhile, Mr Lawrence, I wish you a
prosperous voyage, and I wonder what you will do when you find out that
you have mislaid this letter, a copy of which to somebody or other, as
pretty a scoundrel as yourself no doubt, you have unquestionably by
this time posted?"
Meanwhile, Mr Lawrence walked towards his ship. He should have been on
the whole well satisfied with his meeting with Mr Greyquill. Perhaps
the profound indifference which in reality possessed him as to the old
scrivener's willingness to accept twenty-five guineas, or, in short,
anything as an instalment, was because he had long felt that the old
man never durst take extreme action. Greyquill knew that Mr Lawrence
was very popular in his own particular way in Old Harbour Town and the
neighbourhood. He drank and treated, and in a high degree possessed
the liberality of the sailor. The townspeople were proud of him, not
only because he was a handsome and finely built man, but because he had
shone in many deeds of gallantry whilst in the Navy, and everybody was
agreed that when Mr Lawrence was court-martialled the Service lost as
fine and plucky a seaman as was ever afloat, and one to be recalled to
his duties with apologies and without delay.
Admiral Sir William Lawrence was also highly respected, and people
spoke with pride of his living in their neighbourhood. It was likewise
well known that Mr Lawrence was a friend of the Actons, and in a small
town of small gossips the idea if not the circumstance of Mr Lawrence
having offered for the hand of the beautiful Miss Acton was not likely
to be neglected or overlooked, and to do the gossips justice, they
imputed the rejection of the handsome and dashing young Naval officer
to his loose habits.
Mr Lawrence well judged that if Greyquill locked him up for debt Old
Harbour Town would rise against him. His windows would certainly be
broken, his person might go in danger, for there was more than one who
had suffered at the hands of Greyquill who would be grateful for any
sort of excuse to administer a sound cudgelling to the old man, and
take his chance of the law, fortified by the conviction that if it came
to a fine the amount would be subscribed several times over.
Mr Lawrence's business on board the _Minorca_ did not keep him long. He
was primarily there to see to the arrangements of his own cabin, and
also of another cabin aft which it was his design to convert into a
sick-bay. This end was chiefly accomplished in this cabin by the rough
construction of a couple of bunks.
Just before he left the ship, the young fellow Paul, whom he had told
to come down on Saturday, stepped from the fore part of the ship where
he had been watching two or three men caulking, and gave Mr Lawrence
his usual salute of a pluck at a forelock and a scrape of a hinder
foot.
"Yes," said Mr Lawrence, running his eyes over him, "the articles are
opened at Mr Acton's offices. Go and tell the manager--but here----" He
pulled out a card upon whose face was some printed address, and with a
pencil struck out the address, and wrote to the effect that the bearer
called Paul had been engaged by Mr Lawrence as his cabin servant. These
lines he initialed, and giving the card to the youth, bade him present
it at the offices before one o'clock, or he would find them closed.
"Have you no better clothes than what you wear?" he said.
"No, sir."
"You may give an order for a suit of decent apparel fit to wait at
table with, for I want you to understand that your duties may bring you
to wait upon ladies and gentlemen, though you know nothing about that.
Do you hear?"
"Ay, your honour," answered the fellow with a grin decidedly above a
clown's intelligence.
"You can pay for the clothes on your return, or by drawing an advance
which Mr Acton's manager will let you have. Do you know Miss Acton?"
"The lady that lives at Old Harbour House along with Capt'n Acton?"
answered Paul.
"I mean Captain Acton's daughter."
"I should think I do, sir," answered Paul, grinning.
"You know her well enough, for example," said Mr Lawrence, critically
surveying him as though he took counsel within himself whilst he
talked, "that if I gave you a letter for her and for none other"--he
frowned, and with some passion emphasised _none other_--"you are not
likely to mistake, you are not likely to give it to another."
"I couldn't mistake, your honour. I know the lady as I know you, and if
so be as I did mistake, then I hope your honour would blow my brains
out, for I shouldn't leave your side till your honour did."
Mr Lawrence, with a nod and an expression of face that was scarcely a
smile, quitted the ship, and on the wharf found Mr Eagle, who had as a
matter of fact for a minute or two been watching him.
"That young fellow came aboard not long ago," said the mate, "and I
asked him his business. He replied that he was to be cabin servant by
your choosing. I was nigh telling him he was a liar, for I couldn't
suppose that the likes of him and his rags would suit a gent as has
sarved the King, and been waited upon, as I understand they do in the
Sarvice, by Marines."
Lawrence smiled, and answered: "The Marines may not be all you think
them, Mr Eagle, though they are a noble fighting corps. I took a pity
upon that young fellow. I once helped him out of a difficulty, and his
gratitude rose to the height of a dog's, which, as you know, is very
superior to man's. His ugliness interests me as the sort of beauty you
find in the toad or the snake or other things which make ladies scream.
He can bring dishes aft as well as another, and will look a very pretty
young man in a new suit of clothes. I may not be down to the ship again
till Monday. Good morning, sir."
He walked away, leaving Mr Eagle staring apace, and as he was going
over the side, Paul, who was coming down, received a very acid,
watchman-like look from the mate.
Mr Lawrence pursued the same road home by which he had gained Old
Harbour. In all probability had Mr Greyquill not looked back, the
young gentleman would have found his letter where he had unconsciously
dropped it. That side of the bridge--the up-river water path--was much
unfrequented, save on a Sunday, when lovers walked along it, and now
and again a little family dressed in their best. It was many chances
to one that the two or three who had passed along that path since Mr
Lawrence and Mr Greyquill had stood in conversation upon it, would
have picked up the letter or even taken notice of it, so very remote
from their ideas of things worth stopping for and examining on the
highway was a folded sheet of paper.
Mr Lawrence walked on. He thought of old Greyquill when he passed the
place where he had stopped to talk. He crossed the quaint old bridge
duplicated in the river, which streamed with becalmed surface up
here and mirrored with the precision of a looking-glass the hues and
shapes of every bird that swept the glassy surface for an insect, and
gaining a rich lane formed by seven or eight hundred years of growth,
for a monastery had stood here and a knight had had his manor where
now the land was without relic of stone or brick; but the vegetation
left by these people flourished, and though not above half a mile in
length that lane formed one of the most glorious, soothing, enfolding,
impulse-creating walks in all that country-side which abounded in
little paradisaical reaches of a like kind; I say Mr Lawrence crossed
the bridge, and emerging from the lane struck the high-road, and
presently gained his father's cottage.
Even in three days the weather had worked a miracle in the increase
of the beauty of the orchards in which the Admiral sat pipe in mouth,
tankard at elbow, embowered; a sort of figure who when at his window
would have greatly puzzled the Knight of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_;
for what should such a shape secretly ambushed in a spot fit only for
the dancing tread of the fairy, or the gaping stare of the ogre who
tries to see how the land lies by peering through two apple boughs,
what should such a shape signify, briefly arresting the clouds of
smoke which rose from his lips by vain efforts to extinguish by
copious draughts from his tankard the magical fires that blazed in its
interior? Whether the Knight would have tilted at the figure or pricked
his horse into headlong flight is a conjecture that must be left to
those who have read the poem and know the man.
The Admiral just now happened to be at dinner. A shoulder of mutton
and onion sauce with potatoes roasted with the shoulder and such other
vegetables as the season yielded was a dish fit to set before a king,
and the monarch who turned up his nose at such a dainty should be made
to banquet on nothing but the fare they give kings upon the stage.
Indeed, Sir William would tell his friends he knew for a fact that a
shoulder of mutton was the favourite dish of His Royal Highness Prince
William. If it was objected that the joint yielded more bone than meat
he had his answer:
"Sir, I once said to a sailor who had obtained a berth ashore on
sixteen shillings a week, 'How do you manage to rear your family? How
many are there of you?' 'Why,' he answered, 'there's me and the old
woman and four youngsters and grandfather!' 'You never see meat, of
course,' said I. 'Oh yes, we do,' he answered. 'Meat!' I cried, 'on
sixteen shillings a week and seven people to support, four of them
hungry youngsters!' 'Well,' he answered, 'I doos it in this way. On
Saturday I goes to the butcher and buys a shoulder o' mutton; on Sunday
we 'as it 'ot; on Monday we 'as it cold; on Toosday we 'ave what's left
of the cold; on Wednesday what's left of the cold we 'ave made into
ishee-ashee; on Thursday we makes what's left of the ishee-ashee into
ashee-ishee; on Friday we does without; and on Saturday I goes to the
butcher and I buys another shoulder of mutton.' Now," the Admiral would
say with his face warm with triumph, "name me any joint but a shoulder
of mutton that will supply what kept this family in meat, or the like
of meat, from Sunday to Thursday?"
The Admiral made his son welcome with unusual warmth.
"I never tasted a finer flavoured piece of mutton. This jelly, too,
lifts it to the dignity of a haunch. Those spring cabbages are very
tender. We do not eat nearly enough vegetables in this country. What
purifies the blood like a well-cooked spring cabbage that melts in the
mouth? I am in hopes that we shall get a very good show of potatoes.
Are you fresh from the ship?"
He asked this question with much importance. Indeed, during the last
two days he had manifested great interest in all that concerned the
Merchant Service; had found out, for instance, and avowed the fact to
Captain Acton, that our Colonial Empire was founded by British Merchant
seamen who, in the employ of merchant adventurers, sailed into all
parts of the globe and established settlements, and often fought for
the preservation if not for the conquest of principalities over which
the King's flag now waved. He also pointed to the Honourable East
India Company, and asked if our own or any Navy were superior in their
capacity and splendour to those ships, and whether our Navy treated
their officers with so much consideration, liberality, and prudent
foresight for each man's well-being.
"Yes, I have come straight from the _Minorca_."
"Will you complete your lading by the date announced for your sailing?"
"I think so--I hope so. I am very well disposed towards that scheme I
have put into being--the construction of a sick-bay. Every ship should
have a sick-bay. You must agree with me, sir."
"Wherever room can be found a sick-bay is most important," answered the
Admiral.
"A man falls sick of small-pox. What are you to do with him? You can't
cure him, and you can't heave him overboard. But because one falls ill
it surely does not follow that the others should go sick. Besides, we
carry no surgeon, which was an additional incentive to my suggesting a
sick-bay to Captain Acton."
"Oh, you have done well. Acton will value your foresight. A sick-bay is
a valuable detail in a ship's catalogue."
They talked of this and of other matters connected with the _Minorca_,
and then the Admiral went to the window to fill his pipe, and Mr
Lawrence to his bedroom.
Some thought whilst eating with his father had occurred to him, and he
felt in his pocket for the copy of the letter which he had drawn out
with his pocket-handkerchief and which Mr Greyquill had got possession
of. The handkerchief was there, but the letter was not. When he had
drawn out his handkerchief and felt and found the lining of his pocket
bare, when, in short, he completely understood that the letter was not
where it ought to be and where he knew it should be, he turned as pale
as the muslin curtain that partly veiled his window, started with an
abrupt swagger of motion as though he had been struck violently behind,
then with the energy of madness felt in all his pockets, pulling out
everything, meanwhile gazing around the room with eyes which seemed on
fire with their vigour of scrutiny and passion of fear.
He endeavoured to recollect himself that, by calming his terrors his
memory might better serve him. Urgent alarms often induce vain hopes
which we should laugh at in the cool mood. He believed he might have
put that letter down in his bedroom, and perfectly well knowing that
he had not done so, and yet coaxed by a will-o'-the-wisp hope, he
ransacked the room as though he knew that in it was to be found a gold
piece of value whose discovery demanded a careful search only. What
was certain in his mind was that that letter was in his pocket when he
walked that morning to visit the _Minorca_. He remembered withdrawing
it from his pocket, but in what part of the walk he knew not, and
re-perusing a portion of it to refresh his memory. He tried to find
comfort in the recollection that the letter bore no address and no
signature. But a thundercloud of horror came down on this feeble streak
of sunshine when he recalled the damning, incriminating contents of
that sheet which he had scrawled in pencil at "The Swan Inn." Whoever
found it would know that Mr Lawrence, and Mr Lawrence alone, had
written it, and this, too, irrespective of the handwriting.
But here he found another little hope; some squalls of wet, one
very heavy, had set the kennels running shortly after he had met Mr
Greyquill, and if that letter had lain exposed to those three or
four deluges, it not only stood to be changed into a mere rag to the
eye which none would dream of even glancing at, but the writing must
have been washed out to a degree to render the sense of the letter
unintelligible. He considered that it was not above two or three hours
when that letter was in his pocket, and that it must have fallen
somewhere betwixt his father's house and the _Minorca_ in that time,
for he had taken the same road to and fro. He reflected that that road
was but little used compared with the lane that led to the bridge
where the Actons' carriage had stopped. Understanding as a sailor the
preciousness of time, and conceiving that if the letter had by some
strange mischance fallen during his walk unobserved by him it might
still rest in the spot where it had dropped, insomuch that chance--for
the fellow was a gambler at heart--might concede him yet an hour,
even two hours, in which to find it, he put on his hat and marched
out of the house, just saying to his father in the window that he
had an appointment and should miss it if he didn't hasten, and then
stepped out, casting as he went to right and left of his path eyes as
piercingly scrutinising as those which the madman darts when he seeks
for the philosopher's stone.
It is needless, of course, to say that this searching walk was in vain.
Whatever lay white in his road he rushed at, and in his gizzard he
cursed the vast number of pieces of white paper which did somehow, as
though distributed by innumerable malicious Greyquills, attract his eye
and retard his progress whilst he turned them over.
On his way this side the bridge he met an old man with a stick who
stopped in his lame walk to turn about any little heap his eye met.
This old man was attended by a dog, who smelt at what the man touched.
"Have you seen a letter," cried Mr Lawrence, "a broad piece of paper
folded into four lying in the road?"
"Seen a what, your Anner?"
"Where are you from?"
"From Oozles."
Mr Lawrence repeated his first question.
"I don't know what you mean," said the old man.
Mr Lawrence easily perceived that he didn't, and went on his way
always hunting with his eyes. Past the bridge he met another old man,
a peasant with silver hair, fit, dressed as he was, to walk upon any
stage, and immediately take part in any performance that included
a peasant, a foster-child, and a baron. This white hair gave him a
reverend look, and his legs were strangely bandaged round about, and
his smock was a gown in which he could have preached a sermon without
exciting much suspicion as to the propriety of his dress.
"Have you seen a letter folded in four lying in the road?" shouted Mr
Lawrence.
"I'm a little 'ard of 'earing," was the answer, and the picturesque old
man put his hand to his ear shellwise.
Mr Lawrence went close to him and shouted.
"Gard bless your worship," said the old man in a sweet voice and a face
beautiful with the touches of the pencil of time upon a countenance
originally open, gracious, and good, "I ha'nt received a letter since
her last from my poor old woife, and that 'ull be twenty year ago, as I
know by the laying of the foundation stone----" Mr Lawrence broke away,
and asked no more questions during the rest of his walk.
He saw no letter--nothing like it. He went on board the _Minorca_, and
seeing the mate at the main-hatch, asked in an off-hand way if a copy
of a letter had been found in the cabin, or any other part of the ship
that morning.
"No, sir."
And there was an end. With wrath in his heart, and cursing himself
again and again as a barnyard idiot fit for spread eagling only to
carry such a missive as that about with him when its miscarriage might
prove his destruction, might even now be working it, he stepped on to
the wharf and came across Paul.
"Here!" said he.
The youth approached.
"I have lost a letter this morning," said Mr Lawrence, explaining
its form and size, "and it must have fallen from my pocket somewhere
between my father's house and this ship by way of Old Friar's Road. If
you can bring me that letter, or find out if it has been found, and if
so, by whom, before we sail, you shall have five pounds."
"Simply a letter, your honour, folded into four, without address,
written in pencil, and not sealed?" said the hunchback.
"That's it!" exclaimed Mr Lawrence.
"I'll do my best, sir, and I'll work from dawn to night to find it, if
it's to be found," was the answer.