Peters led me out to the front of the store, where he come to anchor on a shoe-case.
"Set down," says he, pattin' the case alongside of him.
"I don't feel like settin'," I says, ugly. "And I tell you, Mr. Peters—"
"No," says he, "I'm goin' to tell you this time. Or, if I'm not, the feller I told to be here at half past eleven will. Yes ... here he comes now."
In at the door comes Sim Kelley, and, if ever a chap looked as if he was marchin' to be hung, he did. His eyes was red and his face was white under the freckles.
"Here—here I be, Mr. Peters," he stammered.
"Yes, I see you 'be,'" says Peters, dry as a chip. "All right. Now you can tell Cap'n Snow what you told me this mornin'."
Sim looked at me, and at the government man. He was shakin' all over.
"Aw, Cap'n Zeb," he bust out, "don't be too hard on me. Don't put me in jail! I know I hadn't ought to have taken that letter, but you riled me up when you told me I couldn't be trusted with it. Ike pays me to fetch the mail. And he told me he was expectin' an important letter from them stockbrokers. So I—"
Well, there's no use tryin' to spin the yarn the way he did. 'Twas all mixed up with prayers about not puttin' him in jail, and what would his ma say, and "pleases" and "oh, dont's" and such. B'iled down and skimmed it amounted to this: He'd seen me lay that Hamilton letter on the sortin' table, saw it when he come back to tell me that Peters had arrived. After I'd gone out to the platform he was struck with an idea. He would take that letter to Ike, just to show that he could be trusted, and, besides Ike had promised him fifty cents for lookin' out for it and fetchin' it to him direct. He had a key to the Hamilton box and the letter laid right back of that box. All he had to do was to reach through the box to the table, take the letter, and lock up again. So he did it, and put the letter in his overcoat inside pocket.