“It is written in letters, not figures—twenty thousand.”
I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions for a hundred.
Mr. Rivers rose now and put his cloak on.
“If it were not such a very wild night,” he said, “I would send Hannah down to keep you company: you look too desperately miserable to be left alone. But Hannah, poor woman! could not stride the drifts so well as I: her legs are not quite so long: so I must e’en leave you to your sorrows. Good night.”
He was lifting the latch: a sudden thought occurred to me. “Stop one minute!” I cried.
“Well?”
“It puzzles me to know why Mr. Briggs wrote to you about me; or how he knew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an out-of-the-way place, had the power to aid in my discovery.”
“Oh! I am a clergyman,” he said; “and the clergy are often appealed to about odd matters.”
Again the latch rattled.
“No; that does not satisfy me!” I exclaimed: and indeed there was something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever.
“It is a very strange piece of business,” I added; “I must know more about it.”
“Another time.”