"That man is on his deathbed, Traverse, and you must forgive him! He
has restored your letters."
"Yes, after their sacred privacy has been profaned! Oh!"
Traverse handed his mother's letters over to Herbert, that his foster
brother might read them, but Clara's "sacred epistles" were kept to
himself.
"What are you laughing at?" inquired Traverse, looking up from his
page, and detecting Herbert with a smile upon his face.
"I am thinking that you are not as generous as you were some few years
since, when you would have given me Clara herself; for now you will not
even let me have a glimpse of her letters!"
"Have they not been already sufficiently published?" said Traverse,
with an almost girlish smile and blush.
When those cherished letters were all read and put away, Traverse
stooped down and "fished up" from amidst envelopes, strings and waste
paper another set of letters which proved to be the blanks inclosing
the checks, of various dates, which Herbert recognized as coming
anonymously from Old Hurricane.
"What in the world is the meaning of all this, Herbert? Have I a nabob
uncle turned up anywhere, do you think? Look here!--a hundred dollars--and
a fifty, and another--all drafts upon the Planters' Bank, New Orleans,
drawn in my favor and signed by Largent & Dor, bankers!--I, that
haven't had five dollars at a time to call my own for the last two
years! Here, Herbert, give me a good, sharp pinch to wake me up! I may
be sleeping on my post again?" said Traverse in perplexity.
"You are not sleeping, Traverse!"
"Are you sure?"
"Perfectly," replied Herbert, laughing.
"Well, then, do you think that crack upon the crown of my head that I
got upon Chapultepec has not injured my intellect?"
"Not in the slightest degree!" said Herbert, still laughing at his
friend's perplexity.
"Then I am the hero of a fairy tale, that is all--a fairy tale in which
waste paper is changed into bank notes and private soldiers prince
palatines! Look here!" cried Traverse, desperately, thrusting the bank
checks under the nose of his friend, "do you see those things and know
what they are, and will you tell me that everything in this castle
don't go by enchantment?"
"Yes, I see what they are, and it seems to me perfectly natural that
you should have them!"
"Humph!" said Traverse, looking at Herbert with an expression that
seemed to say that he thought the wits of his friend deranged.