“Well, Dandy,” said he, “if your information respecting Fenton prove correct, reckon upon another hundred, instead of the fifty I mentioned.  I suppose I may go now?” he added, smiling.

Dandy, still maintaining his gravity, waved his hand with an air of suitable authority, intimating that the other had permission to depart.  On going out, however, he said, “I beg your pardon, sir, but while you’re abroad, I’d take it as a favor if you’d find out the state o’ the funds.  Of course, I’ll be investin’; and a man may as well do things with his eyes open—­may as well examine both sides o’ the candle-box, you know.  You may go, sir.”

“Well,” thought the stranger to himself, as he literally went on his way rejoicing toward Birney’s office, “no man in this life should ever yield to despair.  Here was I this morning encompassed by doubt and darkness, and I may almost say by despair itself.  Yet see how easily and naturally the hand of Providence, for it is nothing less, has changed the whole tenor of my existence.  Everything is beginning not only to brighten, but to present an appearance of order, by which we shall, I trust, be enabled to guide ourselves through the maze of difficulty that lies, or that did lie, at all events, before us.  Alas, if the wretched suicide, who can see nothing but cause of despondency about him and before him, were to reflect upon the possibility of what only one day might evolve from the ongoing circumstances of life, how many would that wholesome reflection prevent from the awful crime of impatience at the wisdom of God, and a want of confidence in his government!  I remember the case of an unhappy young man who plunged into a future life, as it were, to-day, who, had he maintained his part until the next, would have found himself master of thousands.  No; I shall never despair.  I will in this, as in every other virtue, imitate my beloved Lucy, who said, that to whatever depths of wretchedness life might bring her, she would never yield to that.”

“Good news, Birney!” he exclaimed, on entering that gentleman’s office; “charming intelligence!  Both are found at last.”

“Explain yourself, my dear sir,” replied the other; “how is it?  What has happened?  Both of whom?”

“Mrs. Norton and Fenton.”

He then explained the circumstances as they had been explained to himself by Dandy; and Birney seemed gratified certainly, but not so much as the stranger thought he ought to have been.

“How is this?” he asked; “this discovery, this double discovery, does not seem to give you the satisfaction which I had expected, it would?”

“Perhaps not,” replied the steady man of law, “but I am highly gratified, notwithstanding, provided everything you tell me turns out to be correct.  But even then, I apprehend that the testimony of this Mrs. Norton, unsupported as it is by documentary evidence, will not be:  sufficient for our purpose.  It will require corroboration, and how are we to corroborate it?”