“An’ to be sure ain’t I tellin’ you, Mr. Gridley, jist as fast as my breath will let me?  An’ so, says he, you’d better kape it, says he, mixed up with your other paupers, says he,” (Mr. Gridley started,) “an’ thin we can find it in the garret, says he, whinever we want it, says he.  An’ if it all goes right out there, says he, it won’t be lahng before we shall want to find it, says he.  And I can dipind on you, says he, for we’re both in the same boat, says he, an’ you knows what I knows, says he, an’ I knows what you knows, says be.  And thin he taks a stack o’ paupers out of his pocket, an’ he pulls out one of ’em, an’ he says to her, says he, that’s the pauper, says he, an’ if you die, says be, niver lose sight of that day or night, says he, for it’s life an’ dith to both of us, says he.  An’ thin he asks her if she has n’t got one o’ them paupers—­what is ’t they cahls ’em?—­divilops, or some sich kind of a name—­that they wraps up their letters in; an’ she says no, she has n’t got none that’s big enough to hold it.  So he says, give me a shate o’ pauper, says he.  An’ thin he takes the pauper that she give him, an’ he folds it up like one o’ them—­divilops, if that’s the name of ’em; and thin he pulls a stick o’ salin’-wax out of his pocket, an’ a stamp, an’ he takes the pauper an’ puts it into th’ other pauper, along with the rest of the paupers, an’ thin he folds th’ other pauper over the paupers, and thin he lights a candle, an’ he milts the salin’-wax, and he sales up the pauper that was outside th’ other paupers, an’ he writes on the back of the pauper, an’ thin he hands it to Miss Badlam.”

“Did you see the paper that he showed her before he fastened it up with the others, Kitty?”

“I did see it, indade, Mr. Gridley, and it’s the truth I’m tellin’ ye.”

“Did you happen to notice anything about it, Kitty?”

“I did, indade, Mr. Gridley.  It was a longish kind of a pauper, and there was some blotches of ink on the back of it,—­an’ they looked like a face without any mouth, for, says I, there’s two spots for the eyes, says I, and there’s a spot for the nose, says I, and there’s niver a spot for the mouth, says I.”

This was the substance of what Master Byles Gridley got out of Kitty Fagan.  It was enough, yes, it was too much.  There was some deep-laid plot between Murray Bradshaw and Cynthia Badlam, involving the interests of some of the persons connected with the late Malachi Withers; for that the paper described by Kitty was the same that he had seen the young man conceal in the Corpus Juris Civilis, it was impossible to doubt.  If it had been a single spot an the back of it, or two, he might have doubted.  But three large spots “blotches” she had called them, disposed thus *.* —­would not have happened to be on two different papers, in all human probability.