“That there was preserved at the top of this house a prophetic letter of Stonewall Jackson's.”
The old lady's eyebrows twitched. He had touched the right chord of superstition. Her voice was quite animated as she asked: “And you actually expect this dream to be confirmed?”
“Pardon me; it is already confirmed. A few days after, I saw a newspaper clipping, stating that such a letter was said to be in existence, but that its whereabouts was unknown.”
I shuddered. Couldn't the reckless idiot foresee the next question? It came, straight and sharp:—
“Have you the clipping?”
“I have.”
I gasped with relief, wonder, and admiration.
He had. That wise young Ananias had quietly provided for it all by getting Inky Mike, who loftily terms himself a journalist (being a pressman's assistant in a socialist weekly office), to set up and strike off a brief and vague article which the Little Red Doctor himself had composed for the occasion. Madam Tallaffer read it with heightened color.
“This,” she said to Old Sally calmly, “is without doubt the Sign.”
From a beautifully inlaid box she reverently took an old buff envelope, stamped and postmarked, and put it in the Little Red Doctor's hands. “This, sirs,” said she, “is my talisman. It was given to me, as his most prized possession, by my father, to whom it was written.”