"I am thinking that you are not as generous as you were some few years since, when you would have given me Clara herself; for now you will not even let me have a glimpse of her letters!"
"Have they not been already sufficiently published?" said Traverse, with an almost girlish smile and blush.
When those cherished letters were all read and put away, Traverse stooped down and "fished up" from amidst envelopes, strings and waste paper another set of letters which proved to be the blanks inclosing the checks, of various dates, which Herbert recognized as coming anonymously from Old Hurricane.
"What in the world is the meaning of all this, Herbert? Have I a nabob uncle turned up anywhere, do you think? Look here!—a hundred dollars—and a fifty, and another—all drafts upon the Planters' Bank, New Orleans, drawn in my favor and signed by Largent & Dor, bankers!—I, that haven't had five dollars at a time to call my own for the last two years! Here, Herbert, give me a good, sharp pinch to wake me up! I may be sleeping on my post again?" said Traverse in perplexity.
"You are not sleeping, Traverse!"
"Are you sure?"
"Perfectly," replied Herbert, laughing.
"Well, then, do you think that crack upon the crown of my head that I got upon Chapultepec has not injured my intellect?"
"Not in the slightest degree!" said Herbert, still laughing at his friend's perplexity.
"Then I am the hero of a fairy tale, that is all—a fairy tale in which waste paper is changed into bank notes and private soldiers prince palatines! Look here!" cried Traverse, desperately, thrusting the bank checks under the nose of his friend, "do you see those things and know what they are, and will you tell me that everything in this castle don't go by enchantment?"