"No." He looked startled. "Explain yourself," said he. "What letters? Not such as—" Again his hand went to his pocket, but shrunk hastily back as she pulled out a crumpled bit of paper and began to smooth it out for his perusal.
"What have you there?" he cried.
"Such a letter as I speak of, Judge Ostrander. I picked it up from the walk a day or so ago. Perhaps you have come upon the like?"
"No; why should I?"
He had started back, but his eye falling involuntarily upon the words she had spread out before him, he rapidly read them, and aghast at their import, glanced from the paper to her face and back again, crying:
"He means Oliver! We have an enemy, Mrs. Scoville, an enemy! Do you know"—here he leaned forward, and plunged his eye, now burning with many passions, into hers—"who this enemy is?"
"Yes." Softly as the word came, it seemed to infuriate him. Seizing her by the arm, he was about to launch against her the whole weight of his aroused nature, when she said simply: "He is a common bill-poster. I took pains to find this out. I was as interested as you could be to discover the author of such an outrage."
"A bill-poster?"
"Yes, Judge Ostrander."
"What is his name?"