With a very white face and sternly compressed lips, Gerald took a powerful magnifying-glass and brought it to bear along the various columns of figures.
“I thought so!” he hoarsely muttered, at last, “they have been tampered with! Some of my threes and sixes have been changed to eights; my ones, in numberless instances, have been made into twos, fours, and sevens, but so skilfully that no one would believe me if I should assert it—I could never prove that he did it. Great Heaven! and it has been going on for many months. This was what he had in mind when he crushed my rose and warned me to beware of a similar fate.”
Gerald was sick at heart as he realized that he was standing upon the brink of a fearful precipice and was powerless to help himself—how he had become entangled in a skilfully contrived net from which there seemed to be no possible way of escape.
If Mr. Brewster had been well he would have appealed at once to him, stated his suspicions, and tried to point out the changes he had discovered in the figures, but in the man’s present precarious condition he dared not trouble him with the matter, even if he were allowed an interview with him.
A week passed, and then, to his great joy, he received a note from Mr. Brewster asking him to call upon him at a certain hour the following Saturday, as he had a special commission for him.
He presented himself at the Brewster mansion promptly at the hour mentioned in the note, and was at once conducted to his employer’s presence.
He was greatly shocked at the change in the man—not having seen him since his attack—for he had grown very thin, and seemed to have aged many years. Mr. Brewster greeted him very kindly, and seemed heartily glad to see him, but almost immediately broached the business concerning which he had desired to see him.
“Gerald, I have a secret commission with which I wish to entrust you,” he began, a grave look settling over his face. “I know that I can trust you absolutely, and that is why I have chosen you in preference to any one else.”
“Thank you, sir,” Gerald replied, with a glowing face, his sorely wounded heart greatly comforted by this assurance.