“What?”
“You are counterfeiting.”
“How do you know,” he said, with a touch of menace in his sullen voice.
“Because—because—my father did it—”
“Did what?”
“Counterfeited—what you are doing now!” she gasped. “That is how I know about the fibre. I knew it the moment I saw it—government fibre—and I knew what was on it; the flame justified me. And oh, I could not let them take you as they took father—to prison for all those years!”
“Your father!” he blurted out.
“Yes,” she cried, revolted; “and his handwriting is on that piece of paper in your hand!”
Through the stillness of the evening the rushing of a distant brook among the hemlocks grew louder, increasing on the night wind like the sound of a distant train on a trestle. Then the wind died out; a night bird whistled in the starlight; a white moth hummed up and down the vines over the porch.
“I know who you are now,” the girl continued; “you knew my father in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.”