At a part of the road over which the train passed early in the night, Jermyn begged the ladies to go with him to the rear platform to observe a beautiful moonlight landscape which he knew of old. The Admiral, who remained behind with Trixy, soon began to sketch on the back of a letter. The shrewd old chap had argued to himself that if the letter had really been destroyed there could be nothing dishonorable in duplicating his own sketch on the back of another letter, and offering it in evidence. It would be virtually the same picture, for he would draw it from memory, as before.
He worked so long that Trixy, wishing to do something new, began to look over his shoulder, and soon she exclaimed:
"Why-y-y! I've got a picture just like that."
"You have?" replied the Admiral, carelessly. "That's strange; where did you get it?"
"I tore it off a letter—the back of that letter that came from the fort one day, for you, don't you know, and I opened it by mistake while I was——"
The Admiral dropped pencil and paper, placed his hands upon Trixy's shoulders, and exclaimed:
"You have that picture? Where?"
"Why, in my scrap-book, at home."
"Fifty thousand dollars saved!" shouted the Admiral. He was anything but silent when the ladies returned; indeed, he talked so incessantly that Trif had to break in upon one of his best stories by pleading that she must remove some of the dust of travel before leaving the train at New York.