George Warren scrambled up the stairs, at the risk of the lamp which the woman had handed to him, lighted. Inside the room, he took a handful of kindling from the wood-box, and soon had it ablaze, with the aid of a few scraps of old newspaper. Then he laid some larger pieces of driftwood across, and quickly had a cheerful fire roaring up the chimney.
He threw off his wet clothing, wrapped a blanket about him, and crouched by the fire to enjoy its warmth—for he had been chilled through.
The huge, old-fashioned fireplace would seem not to have been used for a long time; for, in the corners of it were odds and ends and scraps of paper, that had evidently been swept up from the floor and thrown in there, as the most convenient place for their disposal. George Warren poked some of this stuff into the fire and watched it blaze. He picked up a few scraps of paper and threw them in.
Then, as he repeated this action, there was the half of an envelope that the light of the fire illuminated, as he held it in his hand. Part of the address remained, and, even as he consigned it to the flames, he read it clearly:
“Carleton,
“Bellport,
“Me.”
“Hello! that’s funny,” he remarked. “That’s Mr. Carleton’s name—and he was over at Bellport, too. I thought he had gone away to Boston. I’ll have to ask about him in the morning.”
But, in his hurry next morning, George Warren forgot about the letter until he was a half-mile up the road.
“I’ll have to tell Henry Burns and Harvey about that, anyway,” he said, as he walked along. “Henry Burns likes mysteries. He’ll have some queer notion about why Mr. Carleton was down there, I’ll bet.”