"There's papers in it," Peter went on, "they hadn't ought to see. I want you to keep it for me."
"You seem to keep it very well yourself," she said rather absently.
"Oh! but it's wearin' on me," he returned. "If it isn't took care of for me, I shall kick the bucket sure."
"Why should I take it?"
"I reckon," he said, "that you're one could hold your tongue, or anyways would stick to your word, specially to a man with his ribs all drove into him. I want you to keep it till I get well, and promise not to open it."
"Very well," she replied. "If it will make you feel easier, I promise."
The sick man drew from beneath the pillow a black and oily-looking pocket-book, long and flat, and apparently empty. It was so dirty, that Patty seized the first piece of paper at hand, and wrapped it up, thinking to herself that the valuable papers probably existed only in the imagination of the invalid.
"You are very mysterious and dramatic, my friend," she said to herself. "Is this perhaps a chapter from 'The Blood-boultered Battering-Ram;' or every-day life in Montfield?"
The incident turned her thoughts somewhat from herself, and her weariness asserted itself. Seeing that the patient had sunk into a quiet sleep, Patty lay back in her chair, and let herself drift away into a soft drowse.
It was about half-past ten when she found herself suddenly wide awake from a profound sleep. A presence in the room made itself felt before she opened her eyes, and she cautiously peered between her scarcely parted lids without moving. The light was as she had left it, turned down and dim. The heavy breathings of the sick man told that he was still sleeping. Above his bed bent the figure of a woman. Her back was towards the watcher; and, as Patty opened her eyes, she recognized the stooping form as that of Flora Sturtevant. With a cautious, cat-like movement, the woman slid her hand beneath Mixon's pillow, searching for something which Frank Breck had assured her was to be found there. As Patty watched, her mind gathered up with marvellous quickness the allusions made by the sick man to Breck; and, knowing the long intimacy between the latter and Miss Sturtevant, it was not difficult to guess her errand.