I did as I was bid. “Twelve.”
He counted his and laid it down. “Go on with the rest,” he cried.
I counted the sheets in the next; twelve. He counted those in the one following, and paused. “Eleven!”
“Count again,” I suggested.
He counted again, and quietly put them aside. “I made a mistake,” said he.
But he was not to be discouraged. Taking another half-quire, he went through with the same operation;—in vain. With a sigh of impatience he flung it down on the table and looked up. “Halloo!” he cried, “what is the matter?”
“There are but eleven sheets in this package,” I said, placing it in his hand.
The excitement he immediately evinced was contagious. Oppressed as I was, I could not resist his eagerness. “Oh, beautiful!” he exclaimed. “Oh, beautiful! See! the light on the inside, the heavy one on the outside, and both in positions precisely corresponding to those on this sheet of Hannah’s. What do you think now? Is any further proof necessary?”
“The veriest doubter must succumb before this,” returned I.
With something like a considerate regard for my emotion, he turned away. “I am obliged to congratulate myself, notwithstanding the gravity of the discovery that has been made,” said he. “It is so neat, so very neat, and so conclusive. I declare I am myself astonished at the perfection of the thing. But what a woman that is!” he suddenly cried, in a tone of the greatest admiration. “What an intellect she has! what shrewdness! what skill! I declare it is almost a pity to entrap a woman who has done as well as this—taken a sheet from the very bottom of the pile, trimmed it into another shape, and then, remembering the girl couldn’t write, put what she had to say into coarse, awkward printing, Hannah-like. Splendid! or would have been, if any other man than myself had had this thing in charge.” And, all animated and glowing with his enthusiasm, he eyed the chandelier above him as if it were the embodiment of his own sagacity.