“Nobody but you. Look here!”
She extended her little hand with a smile. In the centre of her palm lay four shining double B SHOT.
“There! I found those in my slipper this morning!” Jeff was speechless.
“Of course YOU did it! Of course it was YOU who found my slipper!” said Miss Mayfield, laughing. “But why did you put shot in it, Mr. Jeff? In some Catholic countries, when people have done wrong, the priests make them do penance by walking with peas in their shoes! What have I ever done to you? And why SHOT? They're ever so much harder than peas.”
Seeing only the mischievous, laughing face before him, and the open palm containing the damning evidence of the broken Eley's cartridge, Jeff stammered out the truth.
“I found the slipper in the bear-skin, Miss Mayfield. I put it in my trunk to keep, thinking yer wouldn't miss it, and it's being a kind of remembrance after you're gone away—of—of the night you came here. Somebody moved the trunk in my room,” and he hung his head here. “The things inside all got mixed up.”
“And that made you change your mind about keeping it?” said Miss Mayfield, still smiling.
“No, miss.”
“What was it, then?”
“I gave it back to you, Miss Mayfield, because I was going away.”