"Somebody wants to ruin us!" cried Simon, bursting into tears. "This is stolen money, and they want to lay it on to us."
"All I know about it," said Mrs. Quillpen, "is, that last night, just before you came home, a sailor man came here with all these things, and said they were for us, and made me promise to put them in the stockings, as he directed, and say nothing about his visit to you."
"A sailor!" cried Simon—"I have it! I think I know who it is. Good by—I'll be back to breakfast directly."
Simon ran to the office, and found, as he anticipated, Mr. Latitat there before him.
"A happy New Year to you, sir," said he. "Have you seen your brother?"
"I have not," replied Mr. Latitat.
Simon then told him all that happened on the preceding night; the apparition of the sailor,—the temptation,—the money found in the stockings, in proof of which he showed the thousand dollars, and stating his fears that they had been stolen, offered to deposit the sum in his employer's hands.
"Keep 'em, shipmate; they were meant for you!" exclaimed Mr. Latitat, suddenly and queerly, assuming the very voice and look of the nautical brother of the preceding evening.
While Simon stared his eyes out of his head, Mr. Latitat informed him that he had no brother—that he had disguised himself for the purpose of putting his clerk's long-tried fidelity to a final test, and, that sustained triumphantly, had rewarded him in the manner we have seen. He told how, disgusted in early life by the treachery and ingratitude of friends and relations who had combined to ruin him, he had become a misanthrope and miser; how the spectacle of Simon's disinterested fidelity, rigid sense of honor, self-denial and cheerfulness, had won back his better nature; and he wound off, as he shook Quillpen warmly by the hand, by announcing that he had raised his salary to twelve hundred dollars per annum.
The good news almost killed Simon. "Please your honor," said he, endeavoring to frame an appropriate reply,—"no—that ain't it—please your excellency—you've gone and done it—you've gone and done it! I was Baron Rothschild before, and now—no—I can't tell what I am—it isn't in no biographical dictionary, and I don't believe it's in the 'Wealth of Nations!'"