She had hurried to a chest of drawers, and came back with the letter which she had rustled apart with eager, trembling hands, and now, unfolding the single bank-note it had contained, she thrust it into his fingers as they closed.

“Here, Mrs. Miller,”—­she had drawn back with her arms locked on her bosom, and he stepped forward,—­“no, no.  This sha’n’t be.  Come, come, you must take it back.  Good heavens!” He spoke low, but his eyes blazed in the red glow which broke out on his face, and the crisp note in his extended hand shook violently at her.  “Sooner than take this money from you, I would perish in the street!  What!  Do you think I will rob you of the gift sent you by some one who had a human heart for the distresses I was aggravating?  Sooner than—­ Here, take it!  O my God! what’s this?”

The red glow on his face went out, with this exclamation, in a pallor like marble, and he jerked back the note to his starting eyes.  Globe Bank—­Boston—­Fifty Dollars.  For a minute he gazed at the motionless bill in his hand.  Then, with his hueless lips compressed, he seized the blank letter from his astonished tenant, and looked at it, turning it over and over.  Grained letter-paper—­gilt-edged—­with a favorite perfume in it.  Where’s Mrs. Flanagan?  Outside the door, sitting on the top of the stairs, with her apron over her head, crying.  Mrs. Flanagan!  Here!  In she tumbled, her big feet kicking her skirts before her, and her eyes and face as red as a beet.

“Mrs. Flanagan, what kind of a looking man gave you this letter at the door to-night?”

“A-w, Docther Rinton, dawn’t ax me!—­Bother, an’ all, an’ sure an’ I cudn’t see him wud his fur-r hat, an’ he a-ll boondled oop wud his co-at oop on his e-ars, an’ his big han’kershuf smotherin’ thuh mouth uv him, an’ sorra a bit uv him tuh be looked at, sehvin’ thuh poomple on thuh ind uv his naws.”

“The what on the end of his nose?”

“Thuh poomple, sur.”

“What does she mean, Mrs. Miller?” said the puzzled questioner, turning to his tenant.

“I don’t know, sir, indeed,” was the reply.  “She said that to me, and I couldn’t understand her.”

“It’s thuh poomple, docther.  Dawn’t ye knoo?  Thuh big, flehmin poomple oop there.”  She indicated the locality, by flattening the rude tip of her own nose with her broad forefinger.

“Oh! the pimple!  I have it.”  So he had.  Netty, Netty!

He said nothing, but sat down in a chair, with his bold, white brow knitted, and the warm tears in his dark eyes.

“You know who sent it, sir, don’t you?” asked his wondering tenant, catching the meaning of all this.

“Mrs. Miller, I do.  But I cannot tell you.  Take it, now, and use it.  It is doubly yours.  There.  Thank you.”

She had taken it with an emotion in her face that gave a quicker motion to his throbbing heart.  He rose to his feet, hat in hand, and turned away.  The noise of a passing group of roysterers in the street without came strangely loud into the silence of that room.