“Yes, sir.”
“Yes. Well, I’d like you to answer.”
“I found it, three mornings ago, under the front door of the house where I live with my mother and my little girl.”
“Who put it there?”
The officer looked her steadily in the eyes. They were blue. His own dropped.
“You ought to have brought that letter with you, ma’am,” he said, looking up again; “don’t you see how valuable it would be to you?”
“I did bring it,” she replied, with alacrity, rummaged a moment in a skirt-pocket, and brought it out. The officer received it and read the superscription audibly.
“‘Mrs. John H——.’ Are you Mrs. John H——?”
“That is not the envelope it was in,” she replied. “It was not directed at all. I put it into that envelope merely to preserve it. That’s the envelope of a different letter,—a letter from my mother.”