This envelope, however, was different from any she had ever fumbled, sniffed at, or pondered over.  It was not only of unusual size, but it bore in the upper left-hand corner in bold black letters the words: 

Arthur Breen & company, bankers.

It was this last word which set the good woman to thinking.  Epistles from banks were not common,—­never found at all, in fact, among the letters of her boarders.

Jack was even more astonished.

“Call at the office,” the letter ran, “the first time you are in New York,—­the sooner the better.  I have some information regarding the ore properties that may interest you.”

As the young fellow had not heard from his uncle in many moons, the surprise was all the greater.  Nor, if the truth be known, had he laid eyes on that gentleman since he left the shelter of his home, except at Corinne’s wedding,—­and then only across the church, and again in the street, when his uncle stopped and shook his hand in a rather perfunctory way, complimenting him on his bravery in rescuing MacFarlane, an account of which he had seen in the newspapers, and ending by hoping that his new life would “drop some shekels into his clothes.”  Mrs. Breen, on the contrary, while she had had no opportunity of expressing her mental attitude toward the exile, never having seen him since he walked out of her front door, was by no means oblivious to Jack’s social and business successes.  “I hear Jack was at Mrs. Portman’s last night,” she said to her husband the morning after one of the ex-Clearing House Magnate’s great receptions.  “They say he goes everywhere, and that Mr. Grayson has adopted him and is going to leave him all his money,” to which Breen had grunted back that Jack was welcome to the Portmans and the Portmans to Jack, and that if old Grayson had any money, which he very much doubted, he’d better hoist it overboard than give it to that rattlebrain.  Mrs. Breen heaved a deep sigh.  Neither she nor Breen had been invited to the Portmans’, nor had Corinne (the Scribe has often wondered whether the second scoop in Mukton was the cause)—­and yet Ruth MacFarlane, and Jack and Miss Felicia Grayson, and a lot more out-of-town people—­so that insufferable Mrs. Bennett had told her—­had come long distances to be present, the insufferable adding significantly that “Miss MacFarlane looked too lovely and was by all odds the prettiest girl in the room, and as for young Breen, really she could have fallen in love with him herself!”

Jack tucked his uncle’s letter in his pocket, skipped over to read it to Ruth and MacFarlane, in explanation of his enforced absence for the day, and kept on his way to the station.  The missive referred to the Morfordsburg contract, of course, and was evidently an attempt to gain information regarding the proposed work, Arthur Breen & Co. being the financial agents of many similar properties.

“I will take care of him, sir,” Jack had said as he left his Chief.  “My uncle, no doubt, means all right, and it is just as well to hear what he says—­besides he has been good enough to write to me, and of course I must go, but I shall not commit myself one way or the other—­” and with a whispered word in Ruth’s ear, a kiss and a laugh, he left the house.