Here was a new stunner⁠—I had been calculating on four or five thousand. This news actually took my breath for a moment: Mr. St. John, whom I had never heard laugh before, laughed now.

“Well,” said he, “if you had committed a murder, and I had told you your crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast.”

“It is a large sum⁠—don’t you think there is a mistake?”

“No mistake at all.”

“Perhaps you have read the figures wrong⁠—it may be two thousand!”

“It is written in letters, not figures⁠—twenty thousand.”