"Then I will not put you to that trouble. You remember, before I sailed for Calcutta, I called here and asked you to restore the sum of five thousand dollars deposited with you by my father?"
"I remember it, and at the time I stigmatized the claim as a fraudulent one. No such sum was ever deposited with me by your father."
"How can you say that, when my father expressly stated it in the letter, written by him, from the boat in which he was drifting about on the ocean?"
"I have no proof that the letter was genuine, and even if it were, I deny the claim. I am not responsible for money I never received."
"I understand you then refuse to pay the money?"
"You would have understood it long ago, if you had not been uncommonly thick-headed," sneered the superintendent. "Let this be the end of it. When you present my note of acknowledgment for the amount, I will pay it and not before."
"That is all I ask," said Robert.
"What?" demanded the superintendent.
"I mean that this assurance is all I want. The note shall be presented to you in the course of the day."
"What do you mean?" asked Davis, startled.