“This is some cruel joke, sir; and how could they play it upon me, who have tried all I could to do right, and have never done harm to anybody? Some one has counterfeited my hand; I never wrote a line of this; I have never seen this letter before!”
“Oh, you unspeakable liar! Here, what do you say to this?”—and I snatched the sympathetic ink letter from my pocket and thrust it before his eyes.
His face turned white!—as white as a dead person’s. He wavered slightly in his tracks, and put his hand against the wall to steady himself. After a moment he asked, in so faint a voice that it was hardly audible,—
“Have you-read it?”
Our faces must have answered the truth before my lips could get out a false “yes,” for I distinctly saw the courage come back into that boy’s eyes. I waited for him to say something, but he kept silent. So at last I said,—
“Well, what have you to say as to the revelations in this letter?”
He answered, with perfect composure,—
“Nothing, except that they are entirely harmless and innocent; they can hurt nobody.”
I was in something of a corner now, as I couldn’t disprove his assertion. I did not know exactly how to proceed. However, an idea came to my relief, and I said,—
“You are sure you know nothing about the Master and the Holy Alliance, and did not write the letter which you say is a forgery?”