"Do you persist in saying that Ham Fishley robbed the mail?" said the captain, angrily.
"I do; and I think I shall be able to prove it, too."
"You see, the fellow is a black-hearted scoundrel," said the postmaster, turning to the man who was a stranger to me, and who, I afterwards learned, was a post-office agent or detective. "This boy has been in my family for several years, but he tries to screen himself by laying his crime to my son."
"Have you got any money about you?" asked the constable.
"I have," I replied.
"Search him," added the captain, eagerly.
"You needn't be so savage about it," said I, when the constable came at me as though I had been a royal Bengal tiger, with dangerous claws and teeth. "I'll submit without any pounding."
I turned out my pockets. I had bought a new porte-monnaie in New Orleans, and all my funds were in it. My old one, which contained the burnt envelope, was in my carpet-bag at the hotel, so that I had no motive for concealing anything. The officer opened the porte-monnaie, and counted fifty-one dollars in bills, which he took from it. The trip down the river had cost me about seventy dollars, but the proceeds of the raft and its furniture had added twenty-five dollars to my exchequer. As my brother had paid all my expenses on the journey up the river, I had only spent a few dollars, mostly for the hotel boat.
"Here is more money than was taken from the letter," said the constable.
"That only proves that he has robbed the mail more than once," replied Captain Fishley.