But it was too late to think of this now.  Sandgoist had the ticket.  It belonged to him, and he would sell it to the highest bidder.  A heartless usurer would thus coin money out of the touching farewell of the shipwrecked mariner.  Sylvius Hogg could not bear the thought.  It was intolerable to him.

He resolved to have a talk with Dame Hansen on the subject that very day.  This conversation could effect no change in the state of affairs, but it had become almost necessary.

“So you think I did wrong, Monsieur Hogg?” she asked, after allowing the professor to say all he had to say on the subject.

“Certainly, Dame Hansen.”

“If you blame me for having engaged in rash speculations, and for endangering the fortune of my children, you are perfectly right; but if you blame me for having resorted to the means I did to free myself, you are wrong.  What have you to say in reply?”

“Nothing.”

“But seriously, do you think that I ought to have refused the offer of Sandgoist, who really offered fifteen thousand marks for a ticket that is probably worth nothing; I ask you again, do you think I ought to have refused it?”

“Yes and no, Dame Hansen.”

“It can not be both yes and no, professor; it is no.  Under different circumstances, and if the future had appeared less threatening—­though that was my own fault, I admit—­I should have upheld Hulda in her refusal to part with the ticket she had received from Ole Kamp.  But when there was a certainty of being driven in a few days from the house in which my husband died, and in which my children first saw the light, I could not understand such a refusal, and you yourself, Monsieur Hogg, had you been in my place, would certainly have acted as I did.”

“No, Dame Hansen, no!”

“What would you have done, then?”

“I would have done anything rather than sacrifice a ticket my daughter had received under such circumstances.”

“Do these circumstances, in your opinion, enhance the value of the ticket?”

“No one can say.”

“On the contrary, every one does know.  This ticket is simply one that has nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine chances of losing against one of winning.  Do you consider it any more valuable because it was found in a bottle that was picked up at sea?”

Sylvius Hogg hardly knew what to say in reply to this straightforward question, so he reverted to the sentimental side of the question by remarking: 

“The situation now seems to be briefly as follows:  Ole Kamp, as the ship went down, bequeathed to Hulda the sole earthly possession left him, with the request that she should present it on the day of the drawing, provided, of course, that the ticket reached her; and now this ticket is no longer in Hulda’s possession.”

“If Ole Kamp had been here, he would not have hesitated to surrender his ticket to Sandgoist,” replied Dame Hansen.