“Oh, please don’t be so ridiculous—­oh, I never was so exquisitely nervous,” pleaded the helpless, fluttered young creature.

“I reckon I’ve betrayed your confidence, sir,” said Montgomery, desperately; “but you must have known, from hearsay at least, how I have felt toward this young lady ever since our first meeting, and should not have exposed me to a temptation stronger than I could bear.  I have, indeed, done myself the honor to offer her the hand and heart if one who, although but a poor gentleman, will be richer than kings if she deigns to make him so.”

“Why, how absurd!” ejaculated the orphan, quickly.  “It’s perfectly ridiculous to call me well off:  and how could I make you richer than kings and things, you know?”

The old and the young men exchanged looks of unspeakable admiration at such touching artlessness.

“Sweet innocence!” exclaimed her guardian, playfully pinching her cheek and privately surprised at its floury feeling.  “What would you say if I told you that, since our shrewd Eddy retired from the contest, I have been wishing to see you and our Southern friend here brought to just such terms as you appear to have reached?  What would you say if I added that, such consummation seeming to be the best you or your friends could do for yourself, I have determined to deal with you as a daughter, in the matter of seeing to it that you begin your married life with a daughter’s portion from my own estate?”

Both the young people had his hands in theirs, on either side of him, in an instant.

“There! there!” continued the excellent old gentleman, “don’t try to express yourselves.  Flora, place one of your hands in the breast of my coat, and draw out the parcel you find there. * * * That’s it.  The article it contains once belonged to your mother, my dear, and has been returned to me by the hands to which I once committed it in the hope 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.