“Um-hum.  I always did say he was his sister’s own brother—­for all they don’t look a bit alike.  What’s born into a man never comes out!”

“Mr. Dorrance is my husband, Mammy!  I shall not let you speak disrespectfully of him.  He does what he believes to be right and just,” returned Mabel, sternly.

“I ain’t a-goin’ to arger that with you, my sugar-plum!  You’re right to stand up for him.  I beg your pardon ef I’ve seemed sassy or hurt your feelin’s.  And I dar’ say, there mayn’t be nothin’ wuss ’bout him nor his outside.  And that don’t matter so much, ef people’s insides is clean and straight in the sight of the Lord.  But her outside is all that’s decent about her, ef you’ll listen to me—­”

“You are forgetting yourself again!” said Mabel, unable to suppress a smile.  “Mrs. Aylett is your mistress—­”

The woman’s queer behavior arrested the remonstrance.  Stepping on tiptoe to the door she locked it, and approached her young mistress with an ostentatious attempt at treading lightly, shaking her head and pursing up her mouth in token of secrecy, while she fumbled in her bosom for something that seemed hard to get at.  Drawing it forth at last she laid it in Mabel’s lap—­a small leather wallet, glossy with use, tattered at the corners, and tied up with a bit of dirty twine.

“What is this, and what am I to do with it?”

Mabel shrank from touching it, so foul and generally disreputable was its appearance.

“Keep both your ears open, dearie, and I’ll tell you all I know!”

And with infinite prolixity and numerous digressions she recounted how, in removing the sodden clothing of the unknown man who had been picked up on the lawn on that memorable stormy Chistmas night, more than a year before, this had slipped from an inner breast-pocket of the coat, “right into her hand.”  Not caring to disturb the doctor’s examination of his patient, or to tempt the cupidity of her fellow-servants by starting the notion that there might be other valuables hidden in the articles they handled so carelessly, she had pocketed it, unobserved by them, guessing that it would be of service at the inquest.  Her purpose of producing it then was, according to her showing, reversed by Mrs. Aylett’s stolen visit to the chamber and minute inspection of garments she would not have touched unless urged to the disagreeable task by some mighty consideration of duty, self-interest, or fear.

“‘Then,’ thinks I”—­Phillis stated the various steps of her reasoning—­“’you wouldn’t take the trouble to pull over them nasty, muddy close, ’thout you expected to get some good out on ’em, or was afeard of somethin’ or ‘nother fallin’ into somebody else’s hands.’  Whichsomever this mought be,’twasn’t my business to be gittin’ up a row and a to-do before the crowner and all them gentlemen.  ’Least said soonest mended,’ says I to myself, and keeps mum about the whole thing—­what I’d